(DailyExpertNews) — People bring strange things on planes — that’s nothing new. And the suitcase checked for a trip from New York JFK to Orlando, Florida, on Nov. 16 certainly contained some oddities. As it rolled through the X-ray machine, TSA officials were able to see what appeared to be bottles, wine glasses, a pair of slippers and a life-size outline of a cat.
As it turned out, the outline was life-sized because the cat was a real cat: ruddy, alive, and apparently unharmed from the past few hours of being stuffed into a suitcase and flung around on the way to the plane. An aircraft where it could easily have died in the hold during flight.
The officers who saw the image and then opened the briefcase to find the cat were “shocked,” TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein told DailyExpertNews.
Employees found the cat alive.
TSA
Despite dealing with everything from unauthorized firearms to illegal cranberry sauce on a daily basis, “you rarely come across a live animal in a checked bag,” she said. Fortunately, the cat didn’t try to run away when they opened the trunk.
The passenger, who was traveling on Delta Air Lines, was summoned to explain his luggage and told TSA that “it wasn’t his cat — it belonged to someone else in the household,” Farbstein said. They suggested that the cat – which was sitting on top of the luggage and even sticking its fur out between the zippers of the suitcase – had crawled into the suitcase undetected.
TSA did not cover animal welfare, Farbstein said.
Do you (intentionally) travel with your cat? Farbstein advises putting him in a carrier and asking to have him screened in a private room so he can’t run off when he’s taken out for screening. A search of the cat’s hand luggage can then take place.
And if you’re not traveling with your cat, make sure he doesn’t come with you for the ride.