Cat Logistics - Moving our cat to Portugal

Pets require a USDA certification to come into other countries. There are only so many vets that do this, and seems like even fewer that send the info electronically to the USDA for them to affix signatures and stamps needed for it all to be legit.

We loaded the cat into his airline approved crate from our old apartment to take him for this visit on a very specific timeline, his paperwork had to be certified no more than 10 days before his entry into Portugal, and the USDA was known to take a few days to get it done. So FedEx first overnight labels were sent with the info so the USDA could certify it and pop it into delivery mode quickly.

I was still sweating it all because:

1. The service we used to help with the logistics of this somehow got our initial delivery address wrong for Portugal, they fixed it before we went to the vet. I just tried to trust the process.

2. His flights got changed in route to the vet due to an embargo with Lufthansa, in the space of about 15 minutes he went from leaving Tuesday going through Germany to leaving Monday going through Paris. I started to worry that our options for getting him over the water with the travel chaos of Summer '22 would be an issue.

3. The vet, even though they were told to sign the paperwork (in BLUE ink, no other) went around and around with me about not needing to sign it, that it would be taken electronically. My ability to trust the vet at this point was fairly low, since every time I went they seemed to forget something, and would call me days later for either a forgotten prescription, or a forgotten signature on paperwork.

4. The vet, even though I looked at the paperwork with the right delivery address, submitted the paperwork with the wrong one. I noticed it the day before we left and frantically called our logistics representative on a Sunday, running through in my brain how I'd rent a car to go get the cat from Sintra, 30 minutes or so away from Lisbon, immediately the morning after we make our late arrival. I'd love to say I can recommend them highly, but honestly they just annoyed the hell out of me, caused unneeded worry. If you are in Seattle and need a USDA certified vet, contact me for suggestions of where NOT to go.

5. It is just plain scary to trust your most precious cargo to strangers. He got carsick anytime we had him in the car, so we were just imagining how awful it would be for him. I packed extra towels, trash bags and pee pads and taped them to the top of his crate with his food. I put notes on each bag, as well as a big note that said "My name is Serhad, I'm moving to Lisbon. I might be nervous and loud but would love some petting and attention, I'm really a nice boy, Thank you!". In that moment I knew I'd made the right decision to never had kids, I would be a mess sending them off into the world.

   
   
   

   

   
   
   

I had another freak out moment when the cat's Monday (11 July) afternoon flight got cancelled an hour before take off and he was immediately rebooked, without a notification, just new flight numbers. I caught it before the logistic company did on the way back to the VRBO while running errands, then my phone battery died. For a second or two while I was sprinting from the car to the door to plug my phone in, I was like 'I don't know where the cat is, I trust no one, what have I done?!'. I tried the eyelid breathing technique and when that didn't work I just cried in the corner of the VRBO for a minute, composed myself, and went about figuring out what happened. Shayne arrived a few minutes later after fueling the rental car, he'd dropped me off to sort out what happened because I honestly couldn't handle an extra ten minutes without knowing something. He arrived to a tear stained Jenn ready to breathe fire on anyone. In his epic calm and greatness, he helped me calm down a little, reminded me the cat is fine, will be fine, etc.

Through the miracle of the internet and the tracking system put in place by the logistics company, we were able to see that our 'package' was on the next flight out, when he took off, etc. One piece of live cat, as the manifest said, was fine and well, and in transport. We were just hoping that one piece would arrive altogether, rather than in a messy fragment of feline.

I used the logistics tracking system as well as Flight Aware and FlightRadar24 to track his progress from loading to taxiing to takeoff, and we actually were able to see his plane over our heads in Mt. Baker as the plane got to altitude.

We clinked glasses of rose in Seattle 'heat' and breathed a grand sigh of relief. Then we ate ice cream in celebration, I'd discovered that vanilla and Chambord were magic together.

At that moment, in our final night in Seattle, watching the world go by outside, it felt a bit frozen, the clock slowed a bit as the sun went to sleep. It was all coming into place.