Since we started this little journey there has always been more than just Amy and I. We have two cats that we’ve had almost as long as we’ve been married (nearly 10 years). As with all things included with moving out of the country, taking animals with you involves, you guessed it, bureaucracy. One stroke of luck of course is that in Italy, cats don’t require a long quarantine to move into the country, just a clean bill of health. However, there is a specific order in which you have to do certain things like give them rabies shots and such. They first have to be digitally tagged, then given a rabies shot. We did it in reverse order before we even knew we would be going out of the country. By the time we figured out we even had a problem to fix there was too little time left to fix it.

Ironically, it scuttled an option that I was pretty hesitant to go through with in the first place which was to take them on the plane with us (to save on even more paperwork and bureaucracy on the other end). Traveling with small dogs I see people do all the time, cats not so much. For us there would be a couple of reasons to give pause. First, one of our cats has essentially turned into a bit of a grumpy old man (I’m still considering changing his name to Walter). He likes us well enough, and anybody else he spends enough time around. That “enough time”, however, takes longer than your average TSA security check, and one of the things that would have to happen is they would have to come out of their carriers during said security check. Riiiiiiiight.  Yeah, that’ll go well. The last few times we’ve taken that cat to the vet they’ve had to bring out the thick leather falcon gloves and examine him without taking him out of the carrier, and a few times he’s even had to be sedated…through the carrier no less. I would have handed off that little job to the TSA guy before I even pulled off my shoes. “Here you go pal, best of luck. Oh, and those little white latex gloves aren’t going to help you much, but you might want to keep them on hand to clean up the blood with.” Of course, it also might mean I’d have a cat on a terror watch list somewhere. The second reason is even if we made it through the security without one cat getting us arrested for possessing a deadly weapon, the other cat I’m fairly certain would get us banned from flying on that particular airline ever again. You see, the grumpy old man actually travels pretty well, he just doesn’t like strangers. The other one loves strangers, he just hates traveling, period. As soon as whatever you’re in starts moving he starts the yowling, panting, and generally freaking out (he doesn’t hold a candle to my father-in-law’s cat who drools everywhere and looks like something out of a pet cemetery movie though, thank the Lord).  We’re pretty sure he’d make all that noise the entire plane ride. It drives us nuts, and we like him. So I can only imagine what other passengers would think.

This, of course, was no longer an option (darn the luck) so we were to our next option, which is to have them shipped after the fact. In steps Amy’s mom, who at this point deserves some kind of award for taking on this half of it. Countless hours of driving and keeping them at her house separate from her little puppy (whom they have a tendency to stalk and torture). Shipping a cat is a lot like sending an underage child somewhere on a plane, except you don’t put the little tike in a crate and store them with the luggage (no matter how much noise they make). They have to be secured in a crate and sent with food and paperwork, and they even have to be hand carried by someone from one flight to another if there are connections. In this case Amy’s mom was willing to take them to Atlanta (there’s an IKEA near by, that didn’t hurt :) ), where they could do a direct flight to Rome. By my math she has done about 38 hours of driving for us in this whole process. Thank you , thank you, thank you…..

Now this gave us an excellent excuse to do a few things. First it gave us an excuse to go to Rome, what a shame. It also kinda pushed us out of staying in a hotel and into the corporate housing for the time being because not many places take pets (at least cats anyway). That’s a bonus. I know it sounds awesome to stay in a hotel for a few months and all but we’ve done it before. It gets old pretty quick. A few days after moving our stuff over to the temporary housing we set off to Rome, which is a five hour drive from here. I won’t get into the details of that part simply because I’ve got to write an entire blog entry on driving here, what a rush. Suffice to say that to get there in five hours you take the Auto Strada, which is basically like an Interstate but it’s also a toll road. It takes about 40 Euro to get from here to there and then another 40 to get back, but the road is much nicer than the non-toll roads. Strangely enough the drive from here to there reminds me a lot of driving from our hometown in West, TN to Knoxville, TN (or even from Charleston for that matter). The mountains between here and there are beautiful and there are even towns perched up on peaks every now and again.

Really cool stuff. Unfortunately where we were going in Rome didn’t afford us any site seeing really, the airport is on the outskirts and by the time we got there we were honestly just ready to eat and go to bed. The following day was going to be all about paperwork and charades.

Picking up “cargo” as an individual and not a truck driver is a little strange, especially at an airport. It feels like you’re taking a canoe through the Panama Canal or something. The process starts where you find what you think is the cargo place and wander around lost until someone tells you where to go, then you sign in with security and hand over your passport. In exchange they give us a tag to put in the car window, a couple of badges, and directions to follow the big rig going through the gate. From there you proceed to the Delta cargo office. Lucky for us we ran into the guy we needed to see getting into the elevator. “Oh, I just saw them. Lots of meowing….”.  Yeah, that’d be Milo, who should be hoarse by now. This is where we had to get paperwork signed to take to the vet. After doing his part the guy gave us his number and then jokingly (I think, anyway) told us not to call him.  From there we had to walk back across a large paved area through the security place we started at and up to find the Vet. An important note here is that here in Italy (and I think most of Europe) they don’t number floors the same way we do. The ground floor is 0, what we would consider the 2^nd floor is actually called the 1^st floor. If they know you’re American sometimes they’ll try and do the math for you and tell you what we would call it. I think the Delta guy got confused because he sent us to what we would call the 3^rd floor…and nobody was there. Well, one guy was there, and fortunately he spoke a little English. Apparently that was the “Government” floor. Fantastic. The floor below was the one with the Vet. When we found her we discovered that there was going to be an issue. She didn’t speak a lick of English, and she looked as confused by the paperwork as we were. After a few minutes of charades she decided to take us to a guy a couple of offices down the hallway who spoke a little English. Turns out he was who we needed to see anyway. He didn’t talk much but after filling out yet more paperwork he hands it to us and tells us to go see the customs folks next to pay the fees, which of course is back through the security checkpoint and back near where we started. This was kind-of hidden away but once we found it they were more than happy to take our Euros in exchange for yet more paperwork. From here we were told to go and wait by the big open doors where stuff is being brought out and wait. Finally, the end of this process. We picked a spot and waited, and waited, and waited a little more. There were about five forklifts rolling around like they were in a ballet, but eventually one of them came out with a couple of familiar animal crates sitting on a pallet. I think people were surprised they were cats and not dogs, but there was no mistaking the yowling (this was still Milo).

Bear in mind they just spent well over 24 hours in a box getting only a little food and water the whole trip. No bathroom breaks, no beverage service, and no window seat. Milo was simply ready to get out of the box, you could tell he was stir crazy. Binx on the other hand was doing this thousand yard stare that looked like he’d been through a war or something. Poor guy was out of it, we were a little worried for him. Once we got them back to the car and got things situated we let them out one at a time to use a little box and then just left them out together for food and water. Milo, the one that hates to travel, was all recovered. Litterbox, food, water, sleep, boom, back to normal. Binx on the other hand spent the first 15 minutes trying to cram his fat rear end under the passenger seat, and we weren’t even moving yet (we still had 5 hours to go though). Eventually he calmed down and napped. It was Milo who, true to form, yowled pretty much the whole trip back jumping from the back seat to the front seat and back again every few minutes.

Now of course they’ve been “home” for long enough to get back to their normal selves except I think they have a little bit of jet lag. Night time now is a battle where they want to be awake and downstairs and feel like we should be there with them, making racket and noise to be sure we know they still exist. Or they’re hungry, but they’re always hungry. I know that some folks are shaking their heads (especially you Dad :) ) thinking this is an awful lot of work and expense for a couple of animals. Honestly, I just need something to yell at.

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