The cat owner’s nightmare is taking your cat onto an aircraft, which of course is perfectly permissible in America, but before you arrive at the aircraft, and at check-in, your cat escapes into the air terminal, scampers away terrified, and finds herself high above the thronging crowd at some remote hideaway which is impossible to find and where she remains while you fly to your destination in tears.
The best cat carrier, airline approved, and looking very sexy I have to say, is the Sleepypod Air. I’m not promoting this product to get commissions but because I don’t want to hear about anybody else losing their cat at an air terminal because the thought of it is the thought of nightmares as I’ve said. It is very expensive but when cat safety is at stake it’s money well spent.
This is my friend's cat Pepper (中文名:呆萌). She's four years old and has microchip in her. Please inbox me or the airport officials if you ever see her. All leads are greatly appreciated! We miss her so much. Here's a recent picture of her. pic.twitter.com/vT7eoUowRY
— ntp17 (@tn_nt17) April 21, 2018
This nightmare happened recently and you may have read about it. The owner of Pepper, a beautiful tabby cat with large ears and a white spot on her throat, was scheduled to board a flight with her cat destined for China. Pepper escaped her carrier at check-in. I can only imagine that the reason for this escape was because the carrier was insecure and I’m not blaming anybody. Some cat carriers are less than 100% secure. Or perhaps the cat’s owner decided to stroke or feed her cat by putting her hand into the carrier which allowed her cat to escape.
I’m going to presume, conveniently, for the sake of this article that the carrier was not 100% secure. Pepper got loose inside Terminal 4 at JFK airport in New York.
To the best of my knowledge, the Port Authority police are still searching for Pepper. Her owner (and we don’t have her name) had to leave without her cat. We are told that the owner who is a lawyer was moving to China and of course is devastated that she had to walk away from her cat knowing she was terrified in a strange place full of dangers.
According to people.com, Pepper was last seen “hopping onto the roof of a check-in kiosk”. And a tweet from the Port Authority stated that Pepper escaped “into the upper structures of the terminal”. They described the cat as black-and-white which is incorrect as it happens and it won’t help in the search. Pepper is micro-chipped which is good news. She is four-years-of-age.
Has anybody at the terminal seen Pepper? Please let this nightmare end.
It’s a double nightmare. Cats have to be taken out of the carrier so that the box can be X-rayed while the owner carries the cat through the metal detector. That is when the cat can panic and escape. One solution is to have a second carrier which has already been X-rayed into which you transfer the cat to walk it through. Whatever you do there is always the chance of a mishap particularly because there is always a lot of noisy excited people milling around in airports who upset the cat.
Thanks Harvey. It is a nightmare. It would scare the hell out me.