The cat who travelled to Spain

I thought it would be hell.

Back in March, when we moved from England to Spain, we took our dogs but not our cat Misty. We were moving into a flat and, the poor chap, he’d never lived in a place he couldn’t get in and out of easily – and boy he’s lived in a lot of places: as of today, eleven addresses in four countries, not the kind of existence a cat generally finds congenial.

Misty in Luton
where, sadly, we left him behind for far too long

Fortunately, we sold our house to friends and they agreed to look after him until we had a more suitable place for him. A great arrangement: he was with people he liked, in a house he knew, with the same easy garden access as ever.

But then the months rolled on. We began to feel guilty towards our friends – they said they were enjoying having Misty with them, but how long can you really demand that other people look after your cat? – and we began to feel guilty towards Misty himself, after losing contact with him so completely for such a time.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, all the circumstances aligned. We’d moved out of the flat and into a house, with a garden at the back and a bit of parkland beyond that – just the kind of place likely to appeal to Misty. We’d opened a gap in the fence at the front so he could get out easily and visit the neighbouring cats if he wanted. And I had a business trip to England which I could combine with fetching him.

That’s when I began to dread what I foresaw to be a likely trip from hell.

First, I had to get from London to Luton, where we used to live. That wasn’t a big deal and I completed that stage without much difficulty.

In the BA Lounge at Heathrow
Misty hates the carrier...

Second, I had to get Misty into a zippable pet carrier, which he loathes. The vet had given me something to calm him, which I had to scatter over some of his food, but he’s too savvy for that: he took one smell of the meat, realised it had been adulterated, and wouldn’t touch it. I also had some sprayable happy-cat pheromones with which I liberally anointed the inside of the carrier, and that may have worked: he didn’t complain too much once inside it.

Stage 3 was getting from Luton to the airport. That was OK because we went by cab, which cost a fortune but at least was comfortable and relatively quick. The good thing is that the driver asked whether I had his passport. He thought he was joking, but there really are pet passports, and other documents he needed to fly, and I had indeed forgotten them. The driver’s irony rather saved the day for me, or more to the point, saved the trip.

On the way to Heathrow, Misty peed on me, but I couldn’t hold that against him. He was, after all, badly pissed off so it was probably entirely appropriate. A little emergency washing in an airport toilet dealt with the worst of the problem.

Stage 4 started at check in. Carrier and pet together had to weigh under 8 kilos, but Iberia, one of the only airlines that allows pets in the cabin, has a beautifully Spanish view of that kind of regulation: “8.2 kg,” the man said, “that’s close enough,” and through I went.

Then came security which was where I was terrified that things would fall apart. Fortunately, thanks to the cab driver, I had all the papers. They checked them carefully. They had me take Misty out of the carrier while they searched it – he wasn’t pleased, because I held him firmly and he wanted to wander off – but at any rate, everything turned out to be in order. So I got to the other side of security, breathing a sigh of relief. The most worrying part of the trip was behind me.

I took him out in the plane, briefly
He wanted to go wandering, so had to go back in the carrier...

All that was left was stage 4, the two and a quarter hour flight to Madrid, followed by stage 5, the three and a half hour drive to Valencia. Which turned into something more like five hours because of the storm that lashed us nearly the whole way.

Taking a look around the new place and taking possession

But finally we were home. Misty explored the place with great enthusiasm and slept on our bed that night, since he had us to himself. The next day, we picked up the dogs from where they’d been looked after, and at last all the animals could get together again. There was some slight awkwardness as they got used to each other once more, but they knew each other at once and realised that they were going to be sharing a house again.

Reunited with Toffee and Luci

So the household was complete after a long gap. Misty has settled in straight away and seems to enjoy the place, just as we do. Cat, dogs, humans: we’re set for a life together in Valencia which I hope we’ll all enjoy.

Misty fully settled in

Getting him here hadn’t been anything like the hell I’d feared.

No bar too low...

It doesn’t matter how low you set the bar, someone can generally get under it.

In my case, it was the Spanish airline Iberia. I had to get from Madrid to Lyon for work and, the way the timings worked out, I had to use the scheduled service rather than a low-cost one (or should that be lo-cost?)

Low-cost airlines are much maligned, not least by me. Anything they can charge for becomes chargeable: hold luggage, food, any changes in your travel arrangements (as Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary so forcefully put it, “what part of ‘no refund’ don't you understand?”) So having paid five or six times more for the Iberia flight than I had for the Easyjet one that got me to Madrid in the first place, I expected a somewhat higher level of service.

Boy, was I in for a shock.

Like most of the scheduled airlines, Iberia allows on-line check-in only from 24 hours before take-off. Since I was out until quite late on that day, I decided to check in at the airport instead. A scheduled airline naturally allows that.

As indeed I discovered it did. Except that, as I was going through the process, the woman behind the counter started to look a little pained.

“The plane is full,” she told me.

“Yes,” I said, “I find a lot of them are these days.”

“Yes, but this one is so full that there is no seat for you on it.”

Naïvely, I’d come to think we’d seen the last of that ghastly habit of overbooking. This is when an airline sells more tickets for a flight than it has seats, to ensure that its planes always fly full. It counts on people not showing up for the flight, to save its blushes.

The calculation failed for my flight. But Iberia didn’t seem to be blushing at all. In fact, the way their representatives talked made me feel that they regarded it as my fault that I held a ticket for a plane which they’d filled up after I’d paid for my place.

“There are no seats,” they kept telling me, as though I was dumb or deaf. Or possibly both.

My name was added to the waiting list. Number seven, which was pretty hopeless. Especially when it turned out that there’d been only three no-shows. By sheer good luck, however, the top four on the list insisted on travelling together: they all flew or none of them flew. They dropped out and suddenly I was bumped up to number three – and got the third, and last, available seat.

Snow-covered Pyrenees
But I found crossing them with Iberia less inspiring

So I made it successfully to Lyon. Which was more than could be said for my suitcase. Regular readers of this blog may recall that this happened to me before, just a couple of weeks ago. Again on a scheduled airline flight.

At the lost luggage office, it emerged that I wasn’t the only one. The young man ahead of me in the queue had had his suitcase held in Madrid for “security reasons.”

“Why’s mine been held?” I asked when it came to my turn.

“It says code 19,” explained the airport employee, “but unfortunately I have no idea what that means.”

“Ah, well,” I said, “at least we know it’s a nineteen. That’s better than knowing nothing at all.”

“Indeed, Monsieur,” he agreed, “I’m glad we got that one clear.”

His colleague wasn’t quite as blasé. “Nineteen means they screwed up,” he explained helpfully.

As it happened, that worked out well. I’d been debating whether to pop by the hotel to drop off my case before heading to my meeting, but now I didn’t have to. Iberia kindly held onto my case for the day, freeing me up to indulge in the luxury of sitting on a restaurant terrace in glorious sunshine and enjoying that inspired French institution, the ‘plat du jour’. This is the basic meal many restaurants serve between 12:00 and 2:00, in that properly civilised country where company staff still mostly have a proper lunch hour, with a proper lunch.

Still, I was glad to get the suitcase a few hours later. The burst of lunchtime sun had turned out to be a flash in the pan, and by the evening, I needed a pullover again.

The experience overall leaves me bemused about Iberia. Especially in comparison the low-cost operators.

After all, whatever their faults, they get the essentials right. You may not be able to cancel tickets, but I’ve never been denied travel once I’ve bought a ticket (to be fair, I'm told others have been less lucky...). They mostly take off on time and land on time. Their safety record’s good. So far, not a single low-cost flight I’ve taken has lost my bag.

If only the grand old high-cost airlines could match that standard.