Continent-hopping cat

I'm researching pet relocation companies online so we can start getting quotes and plans made for shipping His Royal Loudness, Beans, home to the U.S. when we move in June. There seem to be a wonderfully vast array of companies specializing in just that--moving beloved furry family members across the country or across the world. It's comforting to know. Many of the companies have been around for decades, and all of the websites I've looked at so far have made me feel so much more at ease about shipping kitty home. It's nice to rest assured that he will be fed, watered and handled with TLC all the way from Indonesia to the Midwestern United States. It does also mean, though, that he is turning out to be the world's most expensive free cat. Not a bad lot in life for a former starving street urchin, huh? (The photo above is from his first flea bath the day after we rescued him, back when we could still get him into the bathtub without risking bodily harm.)

The process for importing pets from Indonesia to the U.S. is surprisingly easy. As long as Beans is updated on all of his shots, declared medically sound (not mentally sound, thankfully--he's rather off in that department) and has his little government-issued kitty passport that the vet updates every time she sees him, he doesn't have to stay in quarantine or anything. He gets to come straight home.

Since the pet moving companies provide door-to-door service, all we have to worry about now is protecting our eyes and limbs from an angry black furball of death when we open his carrier door once he arrives. Kitty hates even five-minute car rides with the passion of a thousand burning suns. He claws his way to the far back of the car, squeezes himself as far under the seat as possible and lets forth such wretched yowls that one would think he were being drawn and quartered. Beans has a flair for the dramatic, which I suppose comes from being raised by two theatrical individuals. He's quite good at the Nobody Loves Kitty routine and has Dead Cat on the Stairs down to a science.

I don't even want to know what he's going to think of us once he meets his new best friend, the dog.