Since giving up our physical aerial studio to focus full time on our global aerial community, we’ve moved across the ocean and brought our beloved cat with us! This post says nothing about aerial and everything about the work and patience that went into making this trip happen. If you’re planning to travel with a cat then maybe our experience flying with our 13 year old furbaby Plume will help you so read on. If you’re looking for aerial content, go here instead.
To bring her or not to bring her? It was never really a question of our desire (to bring her of course), but a question of what would be best for her and what she could handle. We only have plans set in stone for 3 months, so it’s possible at the end of the 3 months she might have to repeat the journey in the other direction. Or travel someplace else with us. So given that, what should we do?
We always hate leaving Plume behind when we travel. The longest we’ve been away from her is 2 weeks and that is incredibly tough! She is definitely a people-loving cat. She greets us at the door every day (well, most days) when we come home. She follows us from room to room. She likes being around her people.
So we talked to her vet and she assured us that even though Plume would not like traveling, she would recover quickly once it was over. She recommended we do our best but don’t expect everything to go perfect. Her recommendations for our particular cat were:
This was easier said than done! Flying from a small airport to another country was not going to be quick. The best we could do was find a direct flight from Charleston to New York (about 2 hours), and then another direct flight from New York to Helsinki (about 9 hours). But, here’s where the airline craziness started.
When we called to book our flights we learned that we couldn’t book that itinerary as one ticket, because it was separate airlines and because we were bringing a cat we had to book our tickets separately with each airline. That meant that we’d have to leave the airport, collect our 3 months worth of checked luggage, then check in for the second flight in person before taking Plume through security for the second time.
And since it’s a separate ticket, if the first flight was delayed we would have no help rebooking the second flight. So that means we needed a long layover to be safe. And because we didn’t know how long it would take to bring a cat through security… So we ended up with an 8 hour layover between the two flights for a grand total of 19 hours of travel time, not including the 2 hours before the first flight and then about an hour and a half after the second flight to pass through customs and get to our accommodations.
Grand total expected travel time: over 23 hours door to door!
This was a relief to know it was safe for our kitty and would help her. Getting it in her mouth was extremely anxiety inducing for everyone involved, but we’re glad we did it. It did help mellow her out, although when we redosed her for the second flight she went completely zonked. More on that in a minute.
Plume was not going to tolerate a harness so this was also a big relief. We did set up her carrying case right on top of her favorite cushion so she slept half in and half out of it for about a month prior. Anytime we gave her treats we always put them inside the carrier. She never slept in the carrier before the travel day, but she was at least comfortable with being around it.
And, we started playing airport noises for her a few weeks before. Annoying for us but probably helpful for her, since she seemed mostly pretty chill in the airports.
As of our trip, to fly a cat into Finland from the US requires some specially timed paperwork. First we had to make sure she had the right kind of EU-approved microchip (she didn’t so she had to get a new one), then we had to make sure that after that microchip was inserted and read she received an EU-approved rabies vaccine. So even though she wasn’t due for another 2 years, she had to get a new shot, poor baby.
Then, sometime within 30 days of arriving in Finland Plume needed a vet appointment that certified her as healthy and vaccinated. AND within 10 days of our arrival in EU, that certificate had to be stamped and signed by a USDA-certified vet and we needed to bring the original with us (digital copies are not accepted). So our vet had to do her part, then submit the paperwork to the USDA within 10 days of our arrival in Finland, then we had to get it back via Fedex in time for our travels. This timeline was super stressful and we had another wrinkle thrown in as well.
We were flying Finnair, because they are the only airline that flies direct from the US to Helsinki and we were trying to avoid too many transfers and too many trips through security for Plume. But, Finnair workers have been going on strike and about a week before our flight we learned that they would be striking on the day our flight was scheduled.
We don’t know the details, but every single union: the pilots, the flight attendants, and the ground workers were striking against Finnair. We did a little research and it looks like an epic story involving bad timing with new plane purchases, closed airways due to the war in Ukraine and a massive drop off in travel from Europe to the US for obvious reasons.
Two days before our flight we learned our flight had been canceled. We still had not gotten our USDA certificate back yet either. Finnair rebooked us on the next flight the following day, but we realized they had not booked Plume with us! When we called (after waiting on hold for literally hours) we learned that they only allow a small number of animals on board and they were all taken. So they rebooked us to 2 days later and we were all set.
As it turns out, that was actually fortunate, because our USDA certificate arrived on the afternoon of our originally scheduled flight which left in the morning. So we would not have made that first flight after all because the certificate took too long to reach us! We’re still not sure if it was Fed-Ex’s fault or the USDA (in their defense there’s been a lot of cut backs recently), but it was very stressful waiting for that piece of paper to arrive.
We’ve always known Plume is a bit of a diva and a spoiled brat. Everything we added to her packing list was one less thing we could fit in for ourselves.
Needless to say this all took up quite a bit of space in our luggage! Mainly the travel litter box and litter, which as you’ll see she never used anyway but we still needed to have it.
Plume knew something was up for a few days leading up to the trip. So she wasn’t surprised when we stuffed her in the carrying case and took off to the airport. She was not happy with the car ride but once we got to the airport she was actually pretty relaxed and curious, looking out at all the people.
We requested a private room to get her through security, and Clayton took charge of it. She was pretty docile and limp when he took her out of the carrier, and just wanted to go back into it after. We went into a family restroom to let her out of the carrier and remove the harness, then we found a relatively quiet part of the airport to sit with her and just relax before the flight.
When we boarded the first plane we were seated in the very back row. The seats were so small that it was really difficult to get her carrying case between the seats and onto the floor. But once it was there we could collapse the back of it to fit it underneath the seat. She meowed a little bit during takeoff and then was quiet for the rest of the trip. We kept sticking our hands in the carrier to rub her face which she seemed to appreciate.
Because of the long layover we booked a daytime room in the TWA hotel, which is steps from JFK so we could easily walk there and back. We wanted to give her some time out of her carrier and give her a chance to use the litterbox and eat a few snacks and drink some water.
She loved the room and we discovered that she loves big windows! She went right over to it and looked very curious. After I gave her a treat she realized she was hungry so she nibbled on some food and drank some water. But she was not interested in using the litter box. We stayed in the room for about 5 hours and she never used it although she did sniff at it once. She chilled with us on the bed for a bit, and then went back into her carrying case and lay down to rest which meant she felt safe in it so that felt like a win.
We gave her another dose of gabapentin before taking off for the airport to begin the whole ordeal again. Our check-in was stressful, very crowded and Finnair is strict with bag weights so we had to repack our carry-on and checked bags at the counter to even them out, then check a bag we had expected to carry on. So we lost the travel litter box and litter which were in that bag. They did not weigh or measure Plume’s carrier but they did look at her paperwork.
Her second time through security was much like the first, except by then she was exhausted and just went limp, poor thing.
We found a quiet corner of the airport to sit in with her, and she just zonked right out with her face against the mesh. We were actually a little concerned until we realized she was just sleeping heavily and that she was exhausted and overwhelmed. We are not great travelers ourselves so we understood and sympathized 100%!
Even though this was a 9 hour flight, the seats were just as small and miserable as the first 2 hour flight. We had trouble putting the carrier on the floor, but once it was down we could collapse the back to get her under the seat. By this point she was probably wondering why she had to do this all again.
A couple of hours into the flight the people in front of us put their seats back which meant we could not lean over to check on her anymore. We are always astonished at just how little space there is on airplane seats! So we put her carrier on our laps and took turns sticking our hand in to give her pets or just keep her company.
I had heard that some people will bring their cats into the airplane bathroom to see if they will go to the litterbox, but when we scoped out the bathroom to see if we could do that we realized those people must not have been on this type of plane. The bathroom was so tiny there’s no way we could carry her carrier into it, much less that and a litter box even a tiny travel one like ours. And, there was a wide and deep void under the sink that she could hide in and we would never get her out. So we gave up on that idea and hoped she would last through the flight. Also we didn’t even have the litter box anyway since they had made us check that bag.
Plume did last, until about 20 minutes before the flight landed. Just as the descent was about to start, she scratched wildly to get out of her carrier and when she couldn’t she ripped up the pee pads we’d lined her carrier with and let loose right into the mesh on the side of the case. Unfortunately the case was on Clayton’s lap at the time.
We ran to the back of the plane and the flight attendants were so kind and helpful, giving us absorbent rags to try to clean her (and him) up. But we didn’t have much time since the descent was starting so we just did our best and hoped for the best.
When the plane landed we went right into a family restroom and let Plume out of her carrier, then did a better clean up job. Clayton had a change of clothes and we took some time to calm Plume before heading to passport control, customs, and then finally into a taxi and to the apartment.
When we got there Plume hid a bit but honestly I think she was too tired to really care that much that she was in a new place. She was very quickly eating, cleaning herself, and exploring the apartment. She was very happy when we walked in with a new regular sized litter box for her, and she seemed to relax when she saw that she had all she needed in the new place (food, water, litter box, and her humans).
It’s only been two days since we arrived but she has already settled in and is back to playing almost like her normal self. We felt so bad for everything we put her through on the travels. It was a lot to ask of her to travel for almost 24 hours straight, and seeing her overwhelmed was no fun. But she is such a great cat and she’s bounced back so quickly.
Hopefully we’ve learned enough to make her next trip (and ours) a little bit easier.
3 Responses
Great story! with lots of humor in it — Tops in the that category for me—a four-star winner—was visuilizing you two in comic-strip mode racing sos through through Finnish Air after Plume’s amazing explosion >>—-
{which (again, for me), was the five-star cherry-on-top winner} Three Cheers for her Fluffi HIghness’s perfect comic timing}
—:> as the plane began its nose-dive toward Helsinki’s landing pad
A great read throughout, with fun illustrations and very helpful info info packed in
KEEP THEM COMING
Great story! with lots of humor in it — Tops in the that category for me—a four-star winner—was visuilizing you two in comic-strip mode racing sos through through Finnish Air after Plume’s amazing explosion >>—-
{which (again, for me), was the five-star cherry-on-top winner} Three Cheers for her Fluffi HIghness’s perfect comic timing}
—:> as the plane began its nose-dive toward Helsinki’s landing pad
A great read throughout, with fun illustrations and very helpful info info packed in
KEEP THEM COMING
Jordan/Clayton:
You guys are amazing. I think Plume, however, is more amazing for being able to survive the journey and recover so quickly. I’ll miss you both terribly now that you’re overseas, but perhaps it will inspire me to travel a little myself.