Recently, while living in Tennessee for an internship, I took a friend's indoor/outdoor cat off her hands because her neighbors did not appreciate the cat catching their birds. The women who had her previously named her Ms. Whitefeet because she had white feet. Yes, she was extremely creative. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to have pets in my apartment, so I needed to fly Ms. Whitefeet home to Maryland immediately. It was my first time bringing a pet on a plane and I had no idea what to expect. Despite researching on the internet, I was thoroughly unprepared.
My flight to Baltimore was very late in the evening so I planned to go to the owner's house after work to catch Ms. Whitefeet. I knew it would be best to sedate the cat so after receiving instructions from the vet, I told her owner to put a little Benadryl in her cat food. Ms. Whitefeet decided, of course, that she was not hungry that day. So when I rushed to the owner's place after work to trap the cat in the carrier I had purchased online, she was 100 percent alert. That is how I got scratch number one.
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After getting her in the cat carrier, I began the two and a half hour drive to Nashville. In the hopes that Ms. Whitefeet would get hungry at some point during the drive, I placed her food dish inside the carrier and sat the carrier in the passenger seat next to me so she would be comforted by the sight of someone she knew. During the car ride, Ms. Whitefeet serenaded me with Meows, a vocal display of her displeasure at travelling. And no, she did not eat the food. When I parked at the airport, I reached into the carrier to grab the full food dish so it wouldn't spill during the journey through the airport. That is how I got scratch number two. I quickly snatched my hand back out of the carrier, spilling wet cat food and Benadryl all over the passenger seat of my car.
Going through security was worse. They made me take Ms. Whitefeet out of the carrier and walk her through the metal detector. Unfortunately, I was unable to put the cat into a harness before capturing her, so I grabbed her by the scruff with one hand so she wouldn't try to dash and with the other arm, I supported her weight at her butt. Despite my cautious handling, I did not go unscathed. Taking her out of the carrier had resulted in puncture wound one and scratches three and four.
I had assumed the TSA officers would send me through one of the new, high-tech metal detectors but because I had the cat, they sent me through the outdated version. I forgot to take off my bracelets so I beeped while walking through the detector and a TSA officer who was clearly peeved by the cat told me I couldn't go through until I took them off. By that point, my cat carrier had already gone into the x-ray. I told the TSA officer, who had now lifted her hand to plug her nose so she would not smell the cat, that I couldn't take the bracelets off while holding the cat and that I needed my carrier to put her down. They were all surprised that I couldn't put the cat down without a leash without her running away. Had they ever been in the presence of a cat..? I asked them if I could go through and put her back in the carrier and get a pat down instead and they said yes. My cat carrier did not come out of the x-ray for about 10 minutes because the x-ray monitor was in the middle of a flirt session with another TSA officer that just couldn't wait. When the carrier came out, I struggled to get Ms. Whitefeet back in, lowering her hind legs in first while holding her by the scruff so she couldn't fan out her limbs to prevent having to go back into the carrier. At this point, I overheard a child behind me whisper, not so quietly, to her mother "why is that lady hurting that cat?"
By then, the worst part was over. There were only 7 other people on the plane I took home so Ms. Whitefeet didn't need to be bothered by a big crowd. Inside the plane, I lifted Ms. Whitefeet up to the window as we were above Washington DC so she could see the planet from an angle that very few cats have ever seen before. She looked out at the lights in awe, but she remained angry with me.
For the next several days, she swatted at me every time I passed. That is how I got puncture wound two and three and scratches five through eleven.
