Erma Earns Her Wings

So by Monday (August 24th) evening most of our worldly possessions were Portland bound and all that was left was to get ourselves out there. Tuesday (August 25th) we packed up our year old kitty Erma, grabbed our bags, and headed to Will Rogers World Airport. Our other cat Max made the road trip by car with us back in May so luckily we only had to handle one cat during our day flying.

That said, Erma's past history of traveling has not been a good one. Every time we put her in the car to take her to the vet she gets car sick, so needless to say we were nervous about how she would handle flying. Erma handled the flying beautifully. She was so calm that we let her out of her carrier (she was wearing a harness and leash) during our long lay over in Salt Lake City, and she sat on my lap and we did some people watching.

It turns out the most nerve-racking part of traveling with an animal is the whole security checkpoint thing. Luckily we had the foresight to call the airport and talk to a TSA representative about what we could expect. The individual we talked to was surprisingly helpful, and filled us in on how to take a pet through security. Just in case you are wondering, we had to take Erma out of her carrier and walk through the metal detector while holding her. Peter volunteered to handle this task and it went very easily. The carrier was x-rayed like any other piece of luggage. The TSA agents were very helpful and didn't create too much of fuss so we were all worried for nothing. The part of the whole traveling that Erma hated the most was the shuttle bus from the terminal (PDX) to the parking lot to pick up our car. She meowed and protested the entire time, luckily the people sharing the shuttle with us were pretty tolerant and it was a short trip.

By Tuesday (August 25th) night our whole family was in Portland, Oregon. Max and I had a warm reunion, but Max and Erma's reunion would have to wait a few days...more on that later.