On the bus
I am writing this blog entry on the bus to Detroit Metro airport in Michigan. One of the miracles of modern communication is that the bus comes equipped with free high speed wireless, which means I can update the blog while traveling.
Our cat Annette von Droste Hülshoff is sitting peacefully next to me in her travel cage. She seems reasonably reconciled to the bus. What she will make of the airplane could be another matter.
The photo at the right shows her in front of the balcony in the Michigan apartment. The white substance on the balcony is indeed snow. It has been bitterly cold, windy, and snowy for the past week, which made for an unusual Easter,
The real adventure in the past week has been getting the cat ready for immigration into Europe. Her German name will probably not impress customs officials without all the proper papers to show she has been vaccinated for rabies, is healthy, and has an implanted identity chip. Our vet first gave the impression of knowing exactly what was necessary. The assistant said they handle this sort of thing all the time and we just needed to make an appointment shortly before the move. When we got there a week before the flight, we discovered he really had no solid information about EU regulations. He knew that some countries required a blood test and that blood test had to be sent to a lab in Kansas which could not process it in under two weeks. He maundered on about regulations for Hawaii, Australia, and Japan, even though we kept reminding him that the cat was going to Germany. We finally had to find the EU regulations ourselves, and if we read them correctly, we should have all the necessary papers. I will find out in the next 24 hours.
Our cat Annette von Droste Hülshoff is sitting peacefully next to me in her travel cage. She seems reasonably reconciled to the bus. What she will make of the airplane could be another matter.
The photo at the right shows her in front of the balcony in the Michigan apartment. The white substance on the balcony is indeed snow. It has been bitterly cold, windy, and snowy for the past week, which made for an unusual Easter,
The real adventure in the past week has been getting the cat ready for immigration into Europe. Her German name will probably not impress customs officials without all the proper papers to show she has been vaccinated for rabies, is healthy, and has an implanted identity chip. Our vet first gave the impression of knowing exactly what was necessary. The assistant said they handle this sort of thing all the time and we just needed to make an appointment shortly before the move. When we got there a week before the flight, we discovered he really had no solid information about EU regulations. He knew that some countries required a blood test and that blood test had to be sent to a lab in Kansas which could not process it in under two weeks. He maundered on about regulations for Hawaii, Australia, and Japan, even though we kept reminding him that the cat was going to Germany. We finally had to find the EU regulations ourselves, and if we read them correctly, we should have all the necessary papers. I will find out in the next 24 hours.
posted by Michael Seadle at 9:31 PM
2 Comments:
Hopefully everyone had the right paperwork and has arrived safely and has settled in by now. Perhaps Annette is even speaking to you again by now. If she can ride quietly in a car she's much calmer than every cat I've ever known. Riding with my childhood cat Squeekers (yes, 2 "e"s) always sounded like we had a siren.
All REAL blogs inevitably include cute cat pictures.. everyone from Neil Gaiman to Librarian in Black seem to eventually bow to this principle. There's even a popular theory that the internet is actually powered by said pictures so the entire 'net community thanks you for your contribution!
Veterinary care would be improved vastly if more vets were willing to say "I don't know" .. and then either find out or send you to someone who DOES know. Hopefully your German vet will be a bit more helpful!
Good luck with the move! My cats were both lambs in the airport and on the plane, and even in the car ride afterwards. The worst part was going through security, b/c you're supposed to take the cats out of their carriers, and if they have to do a special search, you're still holding the cat.
So try to make sure Annette hasn't ingested any metal lately!
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