On my last trip, I came down to the jetway before boarding to meet my new flight attendants.
It’s not unusual for us to switch cabin crew throughout the day, so I go through the same get-to-know-you talk many times a trip. Generally, it’s a short get-to-know-you talk… literally, getting to know each other. But the real guts of the matter is that we are learning a little about each other in the event things get serious on the flight, and it’s nice to know the people on the other end of the phone when we’re putting out fires.
Maybe literally.
So, in this case, I’m walking up to get to know two of the four, whom I learned work together often. When I walked in on their conversation, one was showing the other where her EpiPen was and how to use it on her.
I said, “Perhaps this is something the Captain should be aware of? Also, hello. I’ll be the Captain on this flight.”
Apparently, Ms. EpiPen was seriously allergic to cats and had been forever. Especially for the 37 years she’d been a flight attendant with us.
“The agent just told me there is a cat on the flight. When I was hired, I came here because we didn’t carry pets in the cabin. That changed, but I’m still very allergic to cats.”
She told me that she typically calls off a trip when she looks ahead and sees that a cat is going to be joining us, but because this was a last-minute find, and she didn’t want to gunk up the flight, she worked it out to have the cat in the back, and she would stay up front. She would take her emergency meds that make her jumpy and had briefed the others on the EpiPen.
“Let’s go!” she said. Flight attendants who have been around for 37 years know how to get things done.
So we did.
And while boarding, she learned the pet in the cage… was a dog. And she’d just taken her jumpy meds. And she might not sleep that night, but she had a good book.
She laughed it off.
And so do I.
But it had me thinking about a story from my turboprop days. This story was from around the year 2000 and definitely was not me. I heard this story years ago.
The Saab 340 that I flew, and that the person in the story flew, held a bit over 30 passengers and one flight attendant. In this story that I heard, the gate agent approached the Captain to tell him that a passenger was traveling with her show cat and had bought it a ticket. Apparently, it was a very precious cat, but sadly, the lady and her cat had been removed from the previous flight because the flight attendant was very allergic to cats.
So the story goes that the flight attendant on this flight overheard the cat talk and immediately said she was allergic too, and there was no way that cat was coming on board this flight. The Captain in this story told me he felt that this wasn’t the case and that it was just a power grab, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, even after he tried to reason with the flight attendant. It was the last flight of the night. The lady might not make it to the cat show. Look at what a cute cat it is?
Apparently, so I was told, the flight attendant didn’t budge. But the Captain had a great idea. As sometimes we do.
Allegedly, he asked the passenger if she would be okay with them keeping the cat up on the flight deck with them. He could strap the carrying case into the jumpseat, and 45 minutes later, they would be reunited.
The passenger liked the idea. So I was told.
And off they went.
And.
So I was told.
En route, they pulled the show cat out of the cage and let her rest up on the dashboard to get a good view of the Earth from 16,000 feet. Pilots get bored.
Apparently, the cat didn’t like it at all.
Apparently, it left claw marks on the dashboard, and its hair stood so much on end that they had a hard time stuffing her back in the cage.
Apparently, it was still frazzled and frizzy when they returned her to the owner at the destination.
The story has it that the passenger laughed and joked about how much her precious didn’t like flying.
Apparently, the Captain kept his hands in his pockets while they talked because he had claw marks on them.