Moving to the US
One of the most exciting things Alasdair and I got to experience together was our transcontinental move from Switzerland to San Francisco, USA in 2014.
I had not planned to leave Switzerland, but life happens and I fell in love with an American.
There were many challenges and it was not an easy time for us. The US immigration process was a mess even then. Without getting married, I was only legally allowed to spend up to 6 months per year in the US, during which time I would only be allowed to work for a Swiss company.
Paying rent in Switzerland while not being able to work full-time from a different timezone was not feasible, so I gave up my place and moved in with friends who also kindly agreed to look after Alasdair and Byron while I was in the US (thank you Mike & Tom!).
In addition to that, my now-husband already had a cat - Snejli - who did not like other cats! And, his apartment had a one pet only policy 🤫
When we decided to get married, I worked out a new living situation for Byron, but I was not willing to go anywhere without Alasdair. So we planned our travels - what an adventure!
A long travel day with Alasdair
First, I needed to get Alasdair all the right documents for travel. We needed to get his vaccines up-to-date and get a health check done. The vet said Alasdair was an exceptionally healthy cat! He also needed to be micro-chipped, in case he got lost during any moment of his international travels. Then, we got a passport where they logged all of his health and microchip information.
I researched the best way to bring a cat on a 12-hour flight. At the time, the consensus on the internet seemed to be to fly animals as cargo. When I called the airline (SWISS), they thankfully informed me not to do that! Alasdair was small and lightweight enough to fit in a carrier that I could put under my seat. This was absolutely the right choice. I can’t imagine how worried I would have been during the whole flight if he’d been all by himself in a cold cargo room.
I bought an airline-approved carrier, put a little cat bed in it, and filled his bowl with food.
Our travel day started at 7am CET. We wanted to allow extra time at the airport considering I was both emigrating and traveling with a cat.
Once we got to the airport, I checked in my luggage and after saying bye to my family, went through security with Alasdair. They asked me to take him out of the carrier and hold him to go through the scanner. There was absolutely no way in hell I would do that - picking up a British Shorthair cat is practically suicide even on a normal day, doing it at a massive international airport with thousands of people - absolutely not. They then asked me to put him on the belt instead. I saw his x-ray on the screen as he went through the machine. Terrifying! They assured me this was safe.
Once we got on the plane, a flight attendant made sure to stay close to us so she could assist during take-off and landing. Alasdair was so chill the whole time. He was much less anxious than I was! He occasionally meowed to let me know he was still fine. He took a few naps and I nervously checked on him every few minutes to make sure he was still breathing.
Unfortunately, I for the life of me could not figure out a good way to give him water through his carrier so this made me extra anxious.
Once we arrived at SFO, we went through Immigration and everything went pretty smoothly. I expected this step to take at least 2 hours so I told my husband not to get to the airport too early. After I was done going over all of my paperwork with the officer, I proceeded to Customs. They asked me all the usual questions and I mentioned that I have a cat in my carrier. Their answer was, “Oh, cool!”. They checked none of his documents and asked no additional questions. We were done so quickly, we had to wait quite a bit for my hubby to arrive at the airport. Alasdair seemed to enjoy the fresh air and continued seeming very relaxed.
Once we got in the car, we had another 45’ish minutes of driving in rush hour traffic ahead of us.
By the time we finally arrived in our new home at around 7pm PST, Alasdair had been in his carrier for over 20 hours. We expected him to be scared or grumpy, but as soon as we opened the carrier he walked straight to the water bowl, drank a lot of water, then started exploring his new room.
Settling into life in San Francisco
Alasdair adjusted to his new life in the US very quickly. We kept him in a separate room for a few weeks because we wanted him to settle in and give Snejli enough time to accept that she will be sharing her home with a new cat.
I was still waiting for my work permit, so I mostly spent my days lying on the floor in Alasdair’s room, reading books while talking to him and petting him. It was so fun to spend so much quality time with him.
He never complained about being confined to a small room and also deeply bonded with my hubby whose office Alasdair was staying in.
At some point Alasdair became eager to explore the rest of our home. We especially felt bad about him always being by himself at night so after he escaped one time we decided we would just start keeping the door open from now on.
Introducing the cats wasn’t easy and it took a very long time for Snejli to get used to another cat invading her home. But because I was still at home full-time for several months, spending lots of time with them seemed to help both of them feel more at ease.
Fun fact: my first job in the US was with a website builder company. As part of my application, I created a website dedicated to Alasdair’s immigration journey, which helped me get the job! Sadly, that website at some point was taken offline due to inactivity.
