It's a Good Thing We Love Mindy!

We were in a dilemma about Mindy, our cat. There is a little history about how we came to adopt Mindy - that I won't go into now. Let's just say she was an answer to two innocent children's prayers. Leaving Mindy behind was out of the question!


This posed a problem because what were we going to do with her while we lived in a hotel for a month, went on vacation to Utah and Florida? I know I could not handle 2 months of "transient" cat. As we were debating what to do, our friend Teresa (in Chennai) offered to cat-sit if I could bring Mindy to India when I went for the home-finding trip in October. Great idea!


Little did I know it would be easier to obtain passports and visas for a family of four than it was to bring an 8 lb. cat to India! In brief I had to:

• Contact the airlines and get their list of 12 rules for bringing an animal over.


• Obtain and fill out the correct Department of Agriculture 7-part form.


• Get a physical for Mindy within 10 days of travel


• Update Mindy's immunizations within 30 days of travel


• Get a copy of her medical records including ID and batch number of the shots she received


• Drive to the Dept of Agriculture in Springfield (45 min) to show proof of the above signed forms.


• Find someone in India who could help us clear customs.


• Fill out about 6 pages of documents for India


• Label her travel kennel with arrows, name, address, feeding schedule and somehow attach food and water and hope someone feeds her.


• Somehow get Mindy into this tiny kennel - took 2 people and 4-5 tries - thanks Mom!

Whew! I was able to get everything done - just barely. We got to the airport

got boarding passes, checked the luggage and they were just about to put Mindy in the back when the ticket lady said "I think you might have the wrong kind of kennel". She checked and sure enough, it needed to be assembled with "nuts-and-bolts" instead of "snaps". I told her that wasn't on my list of 12 rules - it must have been rule #13. They wouldn't let her on. NO WAY!!! Here I was supposed to be leaving in an hour and after all this crazy paperwork and running around, she couldn't go.

Ticket lady said if there was some way I could obtain the correct kennel we could send her. So after I went to the car and had a mini-meltdown - teaching the kids that parents sometimes cry too when they're frustrated - I pulled it together, found a Walmart, bought a nuts-and-bolts kennel, zoomed back to the airport and put it together and checked her. DONE! Not quite......

My flight from Chicago to Frankfurt was late and I barely made my connection to Chennai. They had to re-open the airplane doors to let me on and I begged them to wait for my luggage and LIVE ANIMAL. They said they would try. After waiting at the baggage claim in Chennai for about an hour, I resigned to the fact that Mindy (and bags) didn't make it. Next flight in from Frankfurt was in 24 hours. Three days, $400.00, and lots of gray hairs later.....Mindy was in India!

Things I learned:

1. Changing kennels was a blessing. The nuts-and-bolts kennel was 3 times as big as her original one (she could stand up, roll around and do flips if she wanted). I didn't feel so bad knowing she was going to spend about 3 days in it.


2. I didn't smell too bad after 3 days in the same clothes.


3. Cats can hold it for a long time - if you know what I mean.
4. I can still feel the spirit at church.....even in jeans.


5. Where there's a will, there's a way. Hard work does pay off!


6. I guess I really do like Mindy.