By wink of water

I left Seattle at 7:45 pm on Tuesday night and it’s now 8:10 pm on Wednesday night in France. This will be short, I’ll do a longer one once I’ve had a chance to take some pictures. But let me just say, after spending over $200 at the vet getting the kitties checked and microchipped and getting my vet to sign a million things, then Fed Exing the forms to the USDA in Olympia and paying them $100 to endorse them, then panicking because Denmark is very specific that they must be microchipped before their first vaccination for rabies (which is just stupid, since what do you do if you’ve had your cat vaccinated but never microchipped?)….nothing happened. I arrived in Copenhagen, was told the cats were checked through to Paris (so I didn’t need to alert the Border Inspection Post, which I had, via email, but I was worried because I hadn’t faxed them notification) and was told that “their papers will be checked in Paris, if at all.” If at all!!! Well, it’s true, they didn’t really check their papers. A cursory glance. I definitely didn’t need to get them endorsed and probably could have faked the whole thing. They didn’t scan the microchips, either. In fact, the toughest part of taking the cats was getting a cab to drive me to Paris with them. Not sure what the prejudice is there, but most cabs wouldn’t take me. Needlessly documenting my cats for this trip: around $350. Having them in my apartment in Paris, in a crawl space near the ceiling, glaring down at me for what I’ve put them through: priceless.

Also, there was a crying baby on the plane, and it occurred to me that life would be better for everyone if we could put children in the cargo hold.

I’ve heard that people in Paris always speak English to Americans, but that has not been my experience – no one speaks English to me. (And in Copenhagen and on SAS, everyone assumed I was Danish.) The cab driver and I sat in silence for 45 minutes, since he didn’t speak English and I certainly wasn’t comfortable striking up a conversation in French. Upon arrival and signing the documents, I immediately went out to find some kitty litter. There is a teeny tiny market 2 minutes from my apartment (think NYC grocery), and I thought it highly unlikely that they had kitty litter, but found some cat food. He asked me (in French, of course) what I was looking for, and I could manage to say it had to do with my cats, but how do you say kitty litter in French? Finally, I said “toilette pour chats” and he said “ahh!” and indeed, had a few boxes of litter. Then I asked for a box via pantomime, which of course he didn’t have, but he gave me a wide, flat cardboard box that had been used for apples. Perfect. Brought it all home and both cats immediately used it.

So I’ve got internet and a telephone and I will be posting all the info about my address, etc tomorrow. I’ll take some pics of the apartment too (which is about half the size of my bedroom in my old apartment). But for now I’m going to get some sleep.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 4:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.