Cat stows away in luggage, passes security X rays, flies from Florida to Texas

[Jenna]

At least it wasn't a bomb!


Kelly Levy got worried when she couldn't find her tiger-striped cat named Gracie Mae. Levy was relieved to hear a voice on the other end of the line telling her he had Gracie Mae and that the cat was safe and sound. There was just one thing - the animal was no longer in Florida.
"Hi, you're not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas, and I accidentally picked up your husband's luggage," Rob Carter told the startled woman. "And when I opened the luggage, a cat jumped out."
It seems the familial feline didn't want Levy's husband to go, so she crawled inside his bags just before they were sealed up. From there, the bag was put in a car, checked by X-ray through security, dumped on a conveyer belt, loaded into the cargo section of a plane, then taken off that jet and put into the luggage carousel in the arrivals terminal of the Fort Worth airport.
Through all of that, no one caught the unwanted intruder until Carter mistakenly picked up the wrong bag and took it home.
"I went to unpack and saw some of the clothes and saw it wasn't my suitcase," Carter told a local newspaper. "I was going to close it, and a kitten jumped out and ran under the bed. I screamed like a little girl."
The cat was scared, too, scampering under the bed and refusing to come out. He left it there until morning. "I got close enough to see its collar and the phone number on it," he recalls. "So I called the number and got a hold of the crying wife of the traveler."
A grateful Levy paid for an $80 ticket to get the cat shipped back home, a distance of more than 2,000 kilometres.
Carter admits the kitten was cute, and if he hadn't found the owner's identity, he might have considered keeping it. He even had a name picked out for the cuddly charmer: "Suitcase."
But as it stands now, this case really is closed.


Wednesday January 23, 2008
CityNews.ca Staff
http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_18854.aspx

[Kpdpipes]

Last month when we moved, I couldnt find one of our cats at the old house, after the movers had taken the buld of the furniture to the new house. I assumed that she got out while the door was open. Fast forward to later that night, my daughter comes out of her room and tells me she hears a cat. Thinking it was a mix of A: first night in the new house jitters, and B: a stray outside her window in the back yard, I reassured her and sent her to bed. Turns out that Polly snuck into one of the resser drawers while it was open, and had been in there for about 8 hours..the REALLY amazing thing was that she had no "Accidents" Poor thing was a mess for the next 12 hours or so, wouldnt eat, wouldnt use the Makeshift litter box i put together for her (Since the kitties were to remain at the old house for another 2 days i didnt bring the boxes over), and genrally looked like she'd been rode hard and put away wet. Not that i blame her since the movers had spun, flipped, rolled and pretty much done aerobatics with this dresser while they tooke it out of the house and brought it to the new one.

[Ducky]

We'd loaded a sofa into an open trailer when we moved an hour and a half away, and when we got to the new place we discovered that one of my Mom's cats had decided to be a stow away under (and probably inside) the sofa. She never much cared to go for a ride in the car after that.

[Morris]

Way to go TSA . . .

[dapples]

A cat adopted me while I was in college...every time I would pack to come home for a visit....she would jump in the suitcase.....eventally...she would just go to my car...wait to get in..and sleep on the front seat during the trip.....she traveled with me for 4 years....