Cat-Schlepping While Pregnant: A Difficult Combination

March 21, 2019 Solana Joy

Trucking around London with my BFF, just after finding out I was pregnant. A very real ‘gap’ was already starting to open up between our old adventure and a new one.

My last post here was in July. I was packing up for Aífe and I to go on a big schlep to England, via the Netherlands, so that I could participate in a conference on animal ethics and to enjoy a big, summer schlepping adventure with my best friend. I was pretty excited, and intended to blog about our journey in great detail. And now it has been eight months without a word. What happened?

What happened is that exactly two weeks after that last post, I discovered I was pregnant. Which means I was already pregnant when I set off on the big schlep with my heavy suitcase and kitty in tow. I didn’t know that though. My husband and I had been trying to conceive for a few months, but we’d had no luck in my previous cycles, and there was absolutely no sign that anything was different about this one. After a few months of getting down over the negative results, I’d decided to stop worrying myself, to stop thinking about getting pregnant, and focus on the adventure at hand.

So while I was completely exhausted from the moment we set off on our trip, I assumed my fatigue was easily explained by an intense schedule, a lack of sleep, an excess of baggage, and carrying a twelve pound cat around all day in an unexpected and unrelenting heat wave. Those were valid reasons to be tired. But in our last days in England, it finally dawned on me to take a test, and I discovered that there was another reason for my unrelenting weariness; I’d been carrying a stowaway the whole time. A stowaway not much bigger than a poppy seed, yet already triggering an astonishing cascade of changes throughout my whole body… and about to trigger a lot of changes throughout my life.

I am now over thirty-eight weeks pregnant. My due date is April Fool’s Day, but all the books and apps I look at tell me to be ready to go into labor at any second. And so, now that the end is nigh, I’d like to share my experience of trying to combine pregnancy and cat-schlepping.

Long story short: they don’t mix very well at all.

Summer Schlep 2018: Packing for cats

July 16, 2018 Solana Joy

We are going on holiday, my kitty and I. Or on a mission, you might say. A big ol’ schlep, that’s for sure.

I wasn’t certain whether or not to bring her. At first, I had a clear vision of her and I exploring London in sunshine and rad-ness. But over the weeks, wary of actually throwing down my credit card and committing to an actual itinerary, I started wavering. I questioned my motives, her safety, the money. Would it all be for the best? Was I just making everyone’s life difficult? I agonized indecisively for so long that all of my travel options, with or without her, starting to disappear, or rise in price beyond decency.

But she’s coming alright. I haven’t spent three summers in a row rewriting my damn cat-schlepping book to just crap out now. And depending on how the Brexit shit-show plays out over the next eight months, the PETS travel scheme that lets Aífe into the UK with an EU pet passport may no longer be an option. So we’re going while the going’s good. I think she’ll enjoy a lot of it. Not all of it, but neither will I. That’s not how adventure works. No uncertainty, no adventure.

Pets aren’t allowed onto flights into the UK, unless they are sent by outrageously expensive cargo services that aren’t reliably safe. I can’t carry Aífe onto a plane to London, as I would to Berlin or Portland. Islands, huh? So in a couple days, we’ll be riding the rails to Rotterdam, Netherlands; riding the waves to Harwich, UK, and then on another train journey into London. A couple days to explore my favorite metropolis, then up to Oxford for the animal ethics conference, then back to London for several days of exploring, then the long trek home to Berlin again. We’re not doing the 184 Thames River Walk I blogged about in spring, because a) that would be really expensive, b) I’ve got knee problems c) I’ve needed to focus on getting ready for Oxford, and d) just getting to the UK and back is quite a quest in itself. I’m tired just thinking about it – partly because I’ve been too excited to sleep.

So let’s talk packing. How do you pack for a two week, multipurpose schlep with a cat?

Mewsic for Airports: Flying with cats, part 2

June 12, 2018 Solana Joy

Part 2: International flights

If you are flying internationally with your cat, you have all of the same concerns as in the prior post, but more so. You will still be able to find airlines that let you carry your cat on with you, but you will need to check that they accept them on the particular route you want to travel. Yep. The airline might take pets in general, but not to the specific place you are headed to, depending on the length of the route and the rules of the country you’ll land in.

For example, I’ve had excellent experiences flying with Aífe on Lufthansa between Seattle and Berlin. So when I needed to move from Germany to Ireland, I was looking forward to booking a flight with them. However, even though they take pets on flights all over the world, it turns out that they won’t take animals on flights to Ireland or the UK. It doesn’t say that on their website, and the first representative I spoke to said it would be fine for her to join me on the flight I was planning to book. But then several other airlines I was comparing said you couldn’t bring cats onto their flights into Ireland or the UK, so I called Lufthansa back to double-check. It took my talking to several representatives before I could confirm that there was a restriction on flights to those islands.

I called the Irish Department of Agriculture to ask why all of the airlines I’d talked to said the Irish government wouldn’t let them carry pets into Ireland.

Mewsic for Airports: Flying with cats, part 1

June 12, 2018 Solana Joy

There is nothing like air travel to reveal how ambivalent our human attitudes towards animals really are. Is your cat more like a baby, or a piece of baggage? Should you be allowed to bring it on board with you and the other passengers, or should it be thrown down in the hold with all the other things? If you are allowed to bring it on board, should you be able to calm and soothe it when it gets anxious, or should you have to keep it stowed under your seat at all times?

In the last few months, I’ve gotten several messages from women who are getting ready to move internationally, and trying to figure out how to get their cats safely overseas with them. They have no option but to fly with their cats. I’ve been in their shoes, and I know what it’s like. Moving is stressful. Moving overseas is extra stressful. Moving overseas with an anxious best friend who authorities will treat like a suspicious package is extra extra stressful.

I had to do a lot of research to get my cat safely around the world, and am happy to share any information that might be helpful to others in similar boats. I’ve been writing a whole book about traveling with cats, which includes a lot about flying. It hasn’t been published, but since I’ve written it, I keep forgetting that no one can actually read it. Not much help to the world, is it? I’m rewriting the whole book in a different format, but in the meantime, I’ve decided to put up chunks of the old version here, on my blog. The section on air travel was nearly 4,000 words (it’s a complicated subject), so I’m going to edit it slightly, and break it into two halves – information pertinent to all flights, and extra info for international ones.

Part 1: For all flights

Summer Cat Quest Across England. Your Advice Needed!

May 15, 2018 Solana Joy

Summer hiking fun in Oregon, 2017. Best face ever.

Last spring, I became aware of a very cool entity called the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. When I saw they had a call out for papers for their Summer School this coming July, I decided to throw my hat in the ring. I haven’t been remotely involved in academia since turning in my dissertation at the LSE in 2010, and am not part of any institution, so I figured it was a long shot. However, I am excited to say that they got back saying that they loved my proposal, and hoped I would be able to come give a presentation in July!

Needless to say, I’m flipping thrilled. Worried that I’m out of my league and going to shame myself in front of a room of seasoned professionals, but thrilled.

After much deliberation, I’ve decided that if I’m going to travel all the way to Oxford, it would be silly not to tag on some other adventures in the area. And if I’m going to go on adventures, I of course ought to bring along my #1 adventuring companion, aka my cat, Aífe.

I’ve thought about where we might go. There are loads of famously gorgeous places I would like to see in the UK (many of which have glorious Instagram accounts). However, my trip over there hinges on Oxford, so it probably makes sense to look for something in that area. And there happens to be one quest I know I would like to tackle there: The Thames Path. It’s a National Trail that runs 184 miles from the edge of the Cotswolds and through Oxford to Greenwich in London (you know, the place where Time began).

If you’re familiar with our adventures, you’ll know that they’ve got everything: trees! flowers! birds! ice cream! bunnies! bicycles! trains! mountains! castles! boats! planes! rivers! hikes! seasickness! books! naps! art! dentistry! graveyards! cheese! This adventure would be pretty much all of those things rolled into one massive pilgrimage of radness (though hopefully we can give seasickness and dentistry a miss).

The thing is, there’s a few quandaries that need solving if I’m going to make it work. And I only have a couple months to either get a plan sorted, or scrap it. And meanwhile, I have to get together a presentation good enough to impress a room full of experts and lawyers in flipping Oxford. So I’d really appreciate your two cents in figuring this out. If you’re interested, please read on.

#12: We Need a Better Bag: an open letter to designers of backpacks

March 17, 2017 Solana Joy

Dear Designers, Makers, and Other Handy Peoples of the World:

I am writing because I believe there is a type of gear that should exist, but does not. Actually, there are several of those, but there is one whose non-existence is a problem for me every single day. A product that I’m certain would be very popular, and could garner you both great love and profit:

a really great pet-carrying backpack, designed to meet the needs of both the animal being carried and the human doing the carrying.

Such a thing simply does not exist, even though there is a clear and growing demand for such a product.