Travels with my Cat

 

 

My dear husband Stephen is one of a kind, quite unique and is in possession of many hats and many faces.

We are fortunate the we share so much. Not only do we share our love of triathlon that we have had such value from in terms of happiness, satisfaction and exhilaration.

A world where we have met and made friends with literally hundreds of like-minded sports folk, but there are many directions in our full, if slightly off the wall life together.

We share a love of winter sports and that is one of the things that makes winter fun for us on the dark days, when after our training and work is done, we will sit together and shout at the TV, cheering on our favourites during the biathlon events that we follow, closely knowing all the top competitors names.

The same goes for Bobsleigh events all winter long. Both sports have lured us in until we started going to watch a few events live as part of a winter holiday.

I have lost count of the amount of times we have taken flights for a weekend to go to watch some of the figure skating competitions too.

 

The most regular snow holiday is knitted around a week or so spent in St Moritz, to watch one of the World Cup Bobsleigh and Skeleton events to support the GBR team shouting encouragement until we are hoarse. I wouldn’t want to admit to how many times we have marked that trip down in the diary but let us just say that we have stayed in most of the hotels there at on time or another or rented an apartment.

 

Another couple of reason that we both love this trip so much is that St Moritz has the best swimming pool complex that we have ever had to joy of swimming in and many of our triathlon sports, elite athletes, go to train there. So, if we have taken our swim training session there first thing in the morning and then been to watch the Bobsleigh and Skelton events we still have all afternoon to walk in the magnificent scenery which is endless there. We used to Ski as well but I chose to give that up after a couple of injuries, that then kept me from my own first sport for a while.  Steve still will ski a couple of times for a couple of hours on a trip, if the weather is perfect but that has moved out of first place some time ago, he also is a little wary of how long a broken bone takes to mend and how much swimming, cycling, and running time that would lose.

With a show of faith that is greater than mine, Steve has been trying to plan our usual favourite Swiss resort stay for the umpteenth time in our 43 years together.

We shall see if the Covid situation has improved enough for that to happen or IF they do come up with a save-us-all vaccine that would allow safe travel once again.

When Steve first started mentioning his ideas for the hoped-for short vacation, we wondered what the odds were that he could find a pet friendly apartment, so that we could take our little cat Birdy with us; she is in fact a house cat now and has been since the first lock down in March of this year.

 I started to make enquiries with our local Vets practice. This was quite protracted procedure it turned out. We had visited that company many years ago when we always had cats and a variety of other animals.

Birdy is our first pet in over twenty years after we vowed never to have another animal after being very upset when we lost our last two cats together from a virus.

Then Birdy walked into our house and into our lives.

She was a scruffy stray when she first appeared and when it was clear that she had selected our house as a suitable home, I took her to the vets to see if she was chipped or not.

They checked her over found that she was chipped and looked up her details. Her owners had moved away some time ago.

                                                                                                                

We have now had her details changed which didn’t cost that much, but was worth it for the peace of mind. It was also essential if we wanted to take her abroad.

What would also need to be done, was to have her injections attended to and apply for a pet passport, for which she would also need a rabies injection.

That involved going back in thirty days to have a blood test, that would show if the rabies test had worked and then we would not be allowed to travel for another three months!

So that meant that at least the winter holiday was not possible with the cat.

 

I chatted with my daughter Jacqueline about it and she said it was madness.

Her main argument was that it had been a nightmare when they had done all that to take their own dog abroad a few years ago but that it had not ended with the pet passport, because it was then required that a vet in France be visited 24 hours before crossing back over the border.

Then she said something that I was well aware of; Cats are not like dogs! Well, we all know that; Dogs have owners and Cats have staff for a start.

A dog is happy as long as it is with its people and will enjoy looking out of the car window and getting out to stretch its legs.

The cat would be in a cat carrier or a small cage and would hate it all, and try to escape if you opened to door even as much a crack, both on the journey and during the stay and if we should lose her, we would be distraught.

 

Jakki has since sent me links to cat hotels in our area where she would be well cared for by people who knew what they were doing, which seemed to my daughter to be a better option than having somebody stay as a pet sitter in our home. Again, it was not the same as when her dog has stayed with us when they have been away on holidays when I would take him out for walks frequently and he would come back when he was called. A cat sitter might lose the cat by forgetting to close the doors and might not come back if her carefully selected personal slaves were not there.

 

The final death knell for our hopes rang when it was mentioned that nobody knew what would happen after January 1^st when we are finally not part of Europe anymore; the animal passport might be dropped completely or new plans put in place that could be uncertain.

 

So anyway, we have had Birdy’s chip details all changed, and she is officially our cat.

She has had round one of her triple injections and an appointment made from round two in December.

We will see.

Meanwhile; Birdy Rules OK!