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Man lets cat out of the bag
Topic Started: Feb 1 2008, 04:10 PM (64 Views)
Bitsy
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Cat sneaks onto Dallas flight in owner's suitcase
By Sally Apgar | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
January 22, 2008

PALM BEACH GARDENS - When Kelly Levy came home late Friday and her cat, Gracie Mae, wasn't sitting on the bottom step waiting for her, she knew something was terribly wrong.

Gracie Mae, a shy 10-month-old tabby, was in a delicate state of health and still had stitches after being spayed a few days earlier. Levy had last seen her tiger-striped cat a few hours earlier that evening when she left the house to take her husband and his very large black suitcase to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International for a flight to Dallas-Fort Worth.

Levy immediately checked a crawl space in the wall of the bathroom where the cat, who is afraid of loud noises and raucous humans, would often hide. But sweet talk didn't elicit a response from the crawl space.

"I started to tear the house apart. I was frantic. I couldn't find her," Levy, 24, said Monday.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/pal...0,3335674.story

Meanwhile her husband, Seth, 34, had landed in Dallas and couldn't find his black Samsonite suitcase at baggage claim.

Levy called her father, who came over. He used a hammer to take out two bathroom tiles and part of the bathroom cabinet to open the crawl space. But no Gracie Mae. Levy wandered around her Palm Beach Gardens neighborhood in the dark, calling for the cat.

The next morning, resolved to find her, Levy made "lost cat" signs to post around the neighborhood. Just as she was leaving the house, her cell phone rang with an unfamiliar area code and number.

As she recalls, a man said: "Hi, you're not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas, and I accidentally picked up your husband's luggage. And when I opened the luggage, a cat jumped out."

The man agreed to hold onto Gracie Mae until Seth could pick her up later Saturday.

Levy figures that the cat quietly crawled into the suit section of the suitcase and hid.

They threw the suitcase in the trunk and never heard a sound from it.

"My poor cat, who just had surgery, survives being packed away in the suitcase, going through the Fort Lauderdale baggage process, going through the X-ray, being loaded onto the airplane, flown four hours to Texas and unloaded," Levy said.

Then, after being thrown onto the conveyor belt for baggage claim, Levy said her cat was "picked up by some strange person, driven to his house and unpacked."

Gracie Mae returned safely home Sunday night on an $80 plane ticket.

Most of all, Levy said she wants to thank the "wonderful good Samaritan who took care of my cat and even bought her a pet taxi for the flight home."

Calls to the number Levy captured on her cell phone went unanswered, so the identity of the good Samaritan remains unknown.

An American Airlines spokesman said he was unaware of the cat's situation and could not comment on it.

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Timetrvlr
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I'm left wondering what the airport security people thought when the suitcase was x-rayed during baggage handling prior to the flight? Surely baggage is checked for explosives and firearms?
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agate
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What a funny story...so glad it turned out for the cat and yes bless the guy who picked up the wrong suitcase. A big star to him for returning the cat.
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Deleted User
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Wow, what trauma for that poor cat! ::o:
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