We had a wonderful send-off on Saturday, August 2nd. Many friends came over to celebrate Addie’s 8th birthday and to say goodbye. It was wonderful to get a chance to say goodbye to everyone, and the kids had a fabulous time swimming the afternoon away. Here’s my girl with her friends during the birthday song.
The next morning we hurried around the house getting ready to go. Things were going quite smoothly until we were gathering up the cats and found that one of the cat carriers had been ripped. Ender fessed up to the act, but that didn’t change the fact that the carrier was now unusable. A quick stop at Petco on the way to the airport fixed that up, and we were able to also get something to drug the cats with as well while we were there.
The first flight was short, only 3 hours to Detroit. We figured it would be a good test to see how the kids and the cats would do on the longer flight. To our amazement, we found that they both did wonderfully. Addie and Ender played with their Nintendo DS most of the way, and the cats were well-behaved except for take-off and landing, where they did start to yowl for a few brief minutes. All in all, we felt good about things when we landed in Detroit.
In Detroit we met Scott’s parents, as we had a 4 hour layover. They came bearing sandwiches and drinks and a deck of Uno cards. We sat in International Arrivals and ate.
As our flight neared, we decided that it would be a good idea to drug the cats for the 2nd flight. So, we pulled out medicine and the syringe, and proceeded to be outwitted by flying claws and hissing teeth. We got a little of the medication down Three’s throat, but Tiger was having none of it. Oh well, they did great on the first flight, right?
Determined not to have a repeat on the prior flight, we decided to drug them again. It had been about 10 hours, so it was plenty of time in between. As we waited for our next flight, we administered the next dose. Again, Tres got some down her throat, but Tiger absolutely freaked out. The medicine went everywhere, AND he managed to rip the 2nd carrier right down the side with his back claws. I commandeered Addie’s shoe lace to sew the carrier back together (it was mesh), and we waited for the next flight, full of dread for what was to come.
However, much to our surprise, we never heard a peep out of them. Apparently, resigned to their fate, they decided there was no use in yelling anymore. For another 9 full hours, they flew across the world and didn’t have a thing to say about it. Addie made a new friend onboard who was happy to play Nintendo DS with her, both kids found out they hate Indian food, and Scott, Addie and Ender all were able to get several hours of sleep, while I stayed awake and fretted and worried that I had inadvertently OD’d my babies and that I would pick the carriers up after the flight only to find that I had killed my cats. Luckily, this wasn’t the case, and we all arrived unscathed in Hyderabad after 30 some hours of travel (and they never even messed their cages!).
We waited nearly 45 minutes for our luggage, and went through customs in about a minute and a half. The man never even looked at the health certificate for the cats…I could have stuffed 20 rabid rats in the bags and he wouldn’t have been the wiser. All that work and running around for nothing!