Traveling With Charlene

My husband and I love to vacation on the Pacific Coast. For years, we've taken our little black cat, Charlene, with us because she's a member of our family and we don't want to leave her to the care of others. She rides in her carrier in the back seat of the car, strapped in by a seatbelt. No problems taking Charlene with us except for the No Pets policy at most hotels and motels.

We do realize the need for designating only a few rooms to be made available for people traveling with pets. After all, there is the allergy problem and some people don't want to stay where previous occupants had been with their animals. We acknowledge such stipulations and we have lived with the quality, or lack thereof, of the pet-friendly rooms. Through the years, in order to take her with us, we have accepted rooms overlooking parking lots, behind dumpsters and next to check-in, and we've made do with obsolete furniture, equipment and decorating.

However, it's the No Pets places -- those that levy a $300 surcharge if you bring a pet into your room (they have cameras) -- that have been the most frustrating. We have requested that pets be accepted in a room or two at the very least. We've been turned down every time. (But that didn't stop us from sneaking in Charlene, covering her carrier with a coat and pretending it was a suitcase.)

With today's economic woes, managers of such establishments appear to be recognizing that we pet owners are a large bloc of the population -- translation: we spend money -- and are changing their ideas about previous restrictive policies. As an example of such a new way of thinking, consider an ad we saw last week in our local paper for a motel where we've always wanted to stay on the Oregon coast. This motel is right on the beach with full ocean views. Each time we visited the area, we'd drive by the place, but the sign Absolutely No Pets was always out front. But the quarter-page ad included the words, Pet Friendly. Yes! Now if they just won't stick us in a room next to the ice machine.