Cat Arrives Frozen After Plane Ride
Breeder ships rare pregnant cat via airline. It arrives frozen and dead. According to the airline's vet, the cat died from uterine toxicity from multiple dead kittens. Because the baggage handlers thawed, froze, and thawed the cat again, there's no way for the breeder to prove that the cat died from being frozen. The airline has offered to refund the breeder's ticket, but admits no culpability in the cat's death.
Cat flown, arrives to new owner frozen [WPRI] (Thanks to bibliophilebullpen!)
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No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'!
First person to identify the actual airline wins a prize.
There aren't enough details here to put me on one side or the other.
On the one hand, the notion of "shipping" a pregnant cat just doesn't sound like an idea that's safe for the cat.
On the other hand, the cat was in the airline's care and it did freeze, even if the freezing didn't necessarily kill it.
Are baggage compartments usually a safe place for pets (I'm assuming it wasn't the passenger compartment that froze)? I've never traveled with a pet, so I'm not sure what the SOP is for cats + airplanes.
A pox on breeders who ship animals. The whole business is inhumane, and no, I'm not some PETA fanatic.
Adopt your next pet at your local shelter! Put these breeders out of business.
Kind of reminds me of the time Dwight froze Angela's cat and it clawed its way through some frozen vegetables before freezing to death.
Bad situation all around. Poor cat. :(
@ElizabethD: Yeah, I know some animals turn out OK, but I would have more respect for the guy if he didn't ship them in the cargo bin. @ScottRose: They don't seem very safe. Considering how hard it can be to get a seat on a plane and feel comfortable and safe, I can't imagine how an animal in the cargo bin is going to feel.
I just feel so awful for this poor cat. That must have been a terrible way to go.
This is why I would never fly my pet unless it could ride up with the humans. Who knows what the hell might happen to it. Heck, half the time I am shocked when my luggage shows up without a laser beam sawing it in half or a human finger attached to the tag.
I think we're supposed to believe that the magic airplane just automatically freezes things when they die inside the plane. Cat didn't freeze to death; it died of... of... oh, i was pregnant? Dead kittens! Yes. It died of dead kittens. If that darn cat had just stayed alive, it wouldn't have been a' freezin'! We promise (please believe us)!
Sad. I'd be so afraid to check my animals as cargo.
@ElizabethD: I have one shelter and one rescue. They're wonderful. I don't like breeders, but I'm afraid they aren't going away anytime soon. Down where I live, there's a ton of "backyard breeders" who sit in the flatbed of a pickup at Wal-Mart and give away cats or dogs.
Some airlines have heated cargo compartments. I had a pure bred kitten shipped across the states to a small airport and it was a pain to find an airline that had heated compartments for animals.
Shipping an animal in an unheated compartment in winter seems like a bad idea, if that is what happened.
"Rare pregnant cat"
Pregnant cats are not rare. If they were, there'd be a lot less cats in our alley...
Careful where you place your modifiers!
/grammar-nazi
Maybe I'm just a sick person, but am I the only one that laughed a little bit? Maybe it was just the way Ben wrote it that it sounded funny to me. Or that I picture Mr. Bigglesworth being frozen when they open up the cargo hatch.
I would never "ship" a pet. I don't believe the cargo area is heated, at least not like the cabin. So if a plane has to sit on the tarmac for an hour getting de-iced in bad weather, it's probably not good for pets.
Nothing should freeze in the cargo hold of an airplane. The entire airplane is pressurized and usually heated. That's why your shampoo (back when you were allowed to fly with it) didn't explode every time you flew somewhere. I can't see any good reason why it would have gotten cold enough to freeze an animal.
This story makes me nausous. What airline is it? I will never fly them again.
I love kitties and this makes me very sad but when are people going to learn that throwing you pet in the cargo hold, in winter, is a really stupid idea. I mean, come on you dolt. I wouldn't trust a camera or a blow dryer the baggage monkeys let alone my pet.
@downwithmonstercable: I know what you mean about wanting to laugh at sad situations because you're reminded of a movie or TV scene. My pastor was recently asking for prayer for a family whose son had choked to death on a piece of chicken. All I could think about was the scene in Grumpy Old Men where Jacob suggests that his father go out on a date with someone, and Max said, "She's dead. Choked to death on a stack of pancakes at the Lion's Club breakfast two weeks ago."
Sadly after seeing the picture, I was under the assumption that the cat survived and even a few sentences in expected the cat to be pronounced alive after the dumb airline vet thought it was dead.
@ElizabethD: Exactly! Dog breeders and cat breeders are too alike. Some of them are responsible, but they are such a minority that supporting breeders is a bad idea.
@ScottRose: I was of the impression that baggage compartments are not guaranteed to be safe. It's a cold February, so it's cold outside and really cold at 35,000 feet.
As an example, Air Canada restricts and/or discourages putting pets in the baggage compartment during Winter. If the pet was supposed to be in a temperature-controlled baggage compartment, then the airline might be in trouble. But even then, "Air Canada will not be responsible in the event of loss, delay, injury, sickness or death of any pet or animal accepted for transportation."
So he may be SOL.
If the cat was so "rare" (Minskins, a cross between a Munchkin and a Sphynx, are only recognized by one cat breed association AFAIK as an official breed), why didn't the owner care enough to wait for it to be safe to fly?
Or pay for the cat to ride inside the plane?
Or DRIVE TO PICK IT UP?
People make me sick. Scuze me, gonna go live in the woods now, bai.
It should be the other way around; The airline cannot prove or disprove the cause of death due to the poor handling of the live cargo by the baggage crews.
I don't care if they are union, someone will be held accountable for that SNAFU.
Call the ASPCA and let them deal with the clowns.
Actually, you can prove freezing -> thawing, as thawing frozen cells makes them burst (which is basically why cryogenics is a crock of shit). So they can prove that the cat froze and was thawed after by having some smart person with a microscope look at the tissue.
Poor kitty. And kittens gestating inside said kitty.
But I don't really blame anybody except the breeder. There is enough information available out there to know it's not a good idea.
I can has frozen cheezburger
or
I'm in ur catz uturas, toxifying wif my siblinz
@Saboth: "I am shocked when my luggage shows up without a laser beam sawing it in half"
At least when one shows up cut in such a manner, you'd know exactly which was was a double-0 MIS agent.
Uh oh, one of my own taken down. So sad. I've always been leery of people putting animals under airplanes for this exact reason. I can barely deal with the temperature in the cabin of an aircraft, let alone underneath.
@theblackdog: It's a reference to the 4th season of The Office when Dwight mercy-killed Angela's cat. Angela is a cat-obsessed person.
@h3llc4t:
Maybe they charge per animal, and 1 pregnant cat is cheaper than 1 mommy cat and several kittens.
They thought they were being smart.
Now they have 0 kittens.
Are they sure she isn't just pining for the fjords?
I dated a long-time flight attendant for a couple years, and I know that there is a heater of some kind in the cargo compartment (or at least a portion of the cargo compartment). The pilot of the plane is supposed to know that there are live animals being shipped, and then he's supposed to turn the heater on (it's not on by default).
She had told me about a parrot who had been shipped, only to arrive at the destination in pretty bad shape from the cold, because no one turned on the heater. By the time the owner got to a CS representative, the bird had warmed up and seemed normal - so the CS rep basically shrugged and told him to bugger off.
But from what I understand, it is clearly the airline's fault for not having the heater on in the cargo bay.
...and I also am not ever shipping an animal in an airplane's cargo hold anyway.
I was baggage handler in Canada in winter and saw many pets shipped in cold weather.
Cargo holds are heated and pressurized. If they weren't pressurized then the passenger compartment floor would collapse. Holds typically have heated air pumped in or residual heat from circulating air. There is no heat barrier between the passenger & cargo compartments.
They may get cool but not cold enough to freeze. Have your toiletries every exploded because they froze?
If frozen most likely the cat was left out on the tarmac in Rhode Island or at a connecting airport. The airline is still responsible for due care.
You may love your pet but from a legal/liability viewpoint they are just insured (or uninsured) baggage.
@h3llc4t:
...there's not any time that's "unsafe" to fly, granted that the pilot turns on the heater in the cargo bay - which he obviously didn't.
Silly Question, but what temperature are the Baggage Compartments on an airplane? Is it possible that they are at ~30 degrees? If it were hypothetically ~30 degrees, A healthy dog/cat is capable of going outside in the winter without freezing to death. However if the animal did die of natural causes it would quickly freeze.
Having never shipped a dog/cat I never assumed luggage compartments are heated.
Yet another reason why people should not buy pets from breeders or pet stores, they are treated as nothing more than cargo. There are plenty of beautiful, healthy, and lovable animals in shelters waiting for a home.
Sad. Very sad. We love our cats.