Farewell to two feline friends (not dead, just moving)

[thatcrazycajun]

Tomorrow, two of my Songbird's three cats will follow her across the seas. After much phone calling and faxing and e-mailing back and forth between her, me and the pet shipper (Animal Land Pet Movers, if you're wondering; I highly recommend them...and so does our vet), Lilith ("Lily") and Rosita ("Rosie") will be put on a cargo plane at 12:30 or so in the afternoon on Tuesday, and on Thursday at around 7:30 pm Nairobi time, will be reunited with their owner.

Ari, Lily's son (now approaching both the age of eight and the preposterous weight of 23 lbs.), will remain with me; SB jokes that we're setting up gender-segregated households. They have never been parted since she first got them from a Philadelphia shelter six years ago; now they will be apart from each other for at least two years.

I have finally gotten all the ducks in a row today for their shipment; after a frustrating trip all the way out to Conyers (40 minutes' drive each way; you'd think the USDA animal export folks could have an Atlanta office that was actually in Atlanta!) only to wait 90 minutes for a fax of a signature from the vet that an especially anal bureaucrat demanded, and assembly of two new regulation carriers (actually designed for dogs, but needed to match the size requirements), I am ready to drop them off with the pet shipper's driver tomorrow.

Now if only I could handle the rest of my life this well.

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about everything else. You have done this well. Whew!

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

PS: I just printed this out to show dunkelpig, advising her that the headline is not as alarming as it seems. At first I took it for bad news -- the_sheryl lost a feline friend just recently, and madfilkentist lost one last year or early this year. It's good that you haven't! -- not that way, that is.

[cellio]

I hope they have a safe journey there and, in two years, back.

Don't be too surprised if you have to get Ari a kitten. Or he might adjust to being an only cat just fine. Time will tell.

[crowatdusk.livejournal.com]

Wow, i can hardly imagine Ari at 23 pounds! Last I saw him he was perhaps a teenager, but i mostly remember him a kitten fond of clinging to the screen spread eagle inside the small kitchen window facing Morris St. He was akin to a flying squirrel. Lilith on the other hand was low key, very sweet. And pretty. Would love to see a recent photo....?? As the girls are in transit now i will be thinkng of them and anxious to hear of their safe reunion with Mary.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

I saw that picture of kitten Ari on the window screen too; he looked for all the world like one of those Garfield dolls people used to stick inside car windows. You'd never know he was ever that small to see him now; actually 22 lbs. and change, and I'm hoping he'll finally lose some of that flab now that he can't filch from Lily's and Rosie's meal bowls along with emptying his own. Lily is still pretty much as you remember her, though now she is officially a geriatric cat at 10 (Rosie is only a year younger).