September 12, 2016
So, as it turns out, taking a pet across international borders is in fact as difficult as it sounds. And taking the cat to the UK becomes a particularly difficult hurdle because they don't allow you to take the pet in any way except air freight. And don't think you can get away with a comfort animal exception - they literally don't care, and it isn't the airlines' rule, it's the law. If you want to take the cat under the seat in front of you - then you have to fly to Paris, or Brussels, or Amsterdam, on an airline that allows it, and then get yourself and your precious pet to the UK either by land or sea.
Now, I love the cat that I inherited from my friend Sarah, when her family became too large to manage with a pet in a two bedroom Brooklyn apartment. I've always loved Shera - however you spell it, as the originally intended Hebrew Shira, or else the newly transliterated on kitty adoption She-Ra, aka Princess of Power. I love her, but I didn't ever think I loved an animal as much as one must love an animal to get them into this country from the United States.
P was particularly insistent that we take her with us. Even when we learned how much it costs to ship a cat air freight (hint: while we flew over with frequent flier miles, Shera's flight on the same plane cost us much more than our two tickets combined.) So when everything inevitably went terribly wrong, it was possibly karma that P suffered the worst of making it right (unintentionally, but I'll get to that later).
Oh, the Paperwork You'll Do!
To rewind, to take a pet to the UK, you have to get all the relevant paperwork for an EU pet entry, plus any additional UK requirements. A cat has to have had a rabies shot after having been microchipped (so the wand reading the microchip can read that the cat has had the vaccination), but a certain number of weeks before arriving in the UK. Then, within ten days before your arrival into the UK, you have to take the cat to the vet in the US, and have them fill out the EU/UK common form, confirming the health of the pet, and the rabies vaccine. Since we were in the US, we didn't have to get her tested for rabies (some countries you would need to). But then, you have to take the form the vet has filled out, send it overnight express to the USDA in Albany (if you live on the East Coast), then they fill out a section of the form, authorize it, stamp it, and they send it back to you in a self addressed overnight express envelope you have provided.
Yes, there is a reason I am going into this much detail.
This process was complicated by a few things - first, that we got her a rabies vaccine while we were still living in DC (a trip to the vet where she seemed enjoy having her temperature taken more than I would have guessed for a skittish little cat. I didn't judge). Second, that on frantically moving from DC to MA during the summer, I somehow in a sleep-deprived haze mislaid her veterinary records. Third, that we had to show up to a new vet for her second exam with scanned copies of another vet's records - which for some reason identified her as weighing twice as much as she does. I don't know what we'd gain from forging cat records, but, it looked weird. Fourth, we moved to an island where there is no postal delivery, and where you have to have a PO Box on the mainland to get mail. And fifth, and most crucial, a complete and total failure of the US Postal Service.
Picture it. You've spent way too much money to get an airplane approved pet crate (not pictured) that could fit a small Golden Retriever for an 8 pound cat, because that's the minimum size Cat Palace the airline requires. You have the required food container inside it, and you're lining the bottom with your cat's favorite blanket (since there's like three feet of extra space to fill anyway, as she's the size of a croquet ball). You're measuring the spaces between the metal bars to make sure she can't fit her paws through like the regulations say.
You've gotten two sets of forms filled out, because, joy of joys, the form was slightly revised recently, with the UK requiring a new form's use after September 1 (your flight is September 12, and you have to get the form filled out ten days before you get to the UK), but on the day you go to the vet the USDA link to the UK form and the one on the UK website don't match up, so the poor vet fills out both. You try to send off your overnight express mail to Albany while at Staples, but of course, the truly nasty clerk tells you you can't buy a return envelope with a PO Box on it (actually, his exact words, in response to your 'Maybe we should go to the Post Office then', were 'Yeah. GO.' while throwing your envelopes back at you over the counter). Because for some reason USPS won't ship express items to it's own PO Boxes, or at least if you try to buy them from Staples. Oh, and it's Labor Day weekend, so when you do send it out, you have far fewer days to get it back in time for your flight.
A disaster of truly epic proportions
Imagine then, if you will, a complete collapse of society such that human beings cannot override a computer problem created by a very simple mistake made by a human being postal worker. Say a postal worker, were, correctly, to have typed the correct return postal code (let's call this Cape Cod) onto the return label of your self addressed envelope, the one the USDA worker needs to put your cat's documents into to send back to you. Then, the same postal worker were, mistakenly, to have typed the incorrect return postal code into the computer system for when the computer system scans the bar code on the package, such that when the return package is scanned, a computer reads that it is going to a place different than what it says on the label they put on the package (let's call this Albany. Yes, the place where the original package was being shipped, an honest mistake).
So what would happen in this situation? Well, luckily I looked up the online tracking conveniently provided by USPS, and noticed that somehow the package had left the USDA in Albany, gone to Springfield, MA (yay! it came to MA, on its way to Cape Cod), then for some reason went back to Albany (wait, why would it go back to NY?) Although others tried to convince me that surely it would arrive shortly, after P put in a few of the more frustrating several hour middle of the night phone calls I've ever listened in on, clearly, our package was not immediately on it's way back to us. Though we were told lots of people were on it.
I quickly made an executive decision that the package was done for, and in any case given the timing we wouldn't know one way or the other in time to do anything about it. So the next morning, P got to book several emergency appointments - one with the vet to get new paperwork filled out (because the UK won't accept photocopies!), and one the next day with the USDA to re-stamp it. The vet very kindly re-did all of the paperwork (and I'm sure wanted to kill us). And even more heroically, my law school roommate and her son in Albany put up P for the evening on a moment's notice - after he drove the four hours there, in a giant thunderstorm - so that he could hand the paperwork to the USDA officer to have him say 'Didn't I just do this like 2 days ago?'
Why did I make P do all this? You might ask. Why did he do all this backing and forthing to Albany? You might query. After all, Shera is my cat. Well, you would think so wouldn't you? Well, picture a calm blue morning, just a few days earlier at the vet's office. You're there to get the cat's microchip checked just to make sure it's in order and you don't have to get her another stupid rabies shot in time to make the UK entry deadline. You ask your significant other to fill out the paperwork, because you are holding a giant Cat Palace with a meowing cat inside it on your lap at the moment. So he fills out the paperwork. You go into the vet, everything checks out, you come out with the paperwork you need.
You get in the car and look at it, and say 'Wait a second, P, we talked about this. Why does this only have your name on it? We said it should have both of our names on it, so when we got to Heathrow either one of us could talk to customs and everything if there was an issue. And why does my cat now have your last name?' And he, fatefully as it turns out says 'Oh, I had to fill out the paperwork so I just put in my information. It doesn't really matter.' Of course, the rare times when it does matter is when the UK and US regulations say that only the owner listed on the veterinary documents can bring in and receive the animal's certificate to be stamped. But he did save possibly 45 seconds of time filling out paperwork, so…
The Black Hole of Cuteness
Meanwhile, back in the continuing struggle of Shera's paperwork vs. the US Postal Service, I had signed up for text alerts of when the package arrived where. From the regular text message alerts, it appeared that our cat's veterinary documents had created an insolvable infinite loop, that I believe in the future physicists and mathematicians will use as the foundation to unlocking the mysteries of black holes. The package would go to Springfield, then bounce back to Albany, then Springfield, then Albany, Springfield, Albany, Springfield, Albany.
When P called, they told him that what was happening was that in Albany, a human being would look at the label. The label said the package should be sent to Cape Cod, as it had a Cape Cod zip code printed on it. (Yay, humans!) In Springfield, rather than a human, a computer would then scan the label, which would come up as a package that should be sent back to Albany (Boo computers!). Back in Albany. . .
Now, this was admittedly a frustrating thing to have happening. But honestly, I might have been able to deal with it, if only we weren't simultaneously supposed to be moving most of our possessions into storage from an island with no cars, while also moving to another country, across an ocean like, in two days. I mean come on Fates, give me just one tiny break here.
Also, did I mention all this trouble was over paperwork to take a tiny 8 pound cat to Wales (or, if you believe her DC vet records, a Garfield-esque 13 pound cat)? With all the work this was taking us, you'd think she was a priceless, rare breed show cat, or an irreplaceable work of art, or that she was literally made of gold. You certainly wouldn't think we were putting in all this effort for the pile of snoring black fur that I swear was awake and acknowledged my existence for maybe five minutes during this whole ordeal.
But oh, she's just so cute.