Our Trip Home: included a cat

Our next leg of the trip was on to Lusaka.  But I need to back track a little bit.  The next picture I wanted to post has a cat carrier in it and so I need to explain.  We have a cat "Princess" that has been with us for the last 6 years.  We got her when she was 6 weeks old, although I think she was younger than that.  She has always been an inside cat, I wouldn't let her out of the house.  She became a wonderful part of the family.  So we made plans to bring her with us.  That is also why we went to Lusaka a week before leaving, to make sure everything was in order for her to fly.

 

Her carrier, complete with paper work, taped on address and cat food, funnels to give her water along the way.

 

 

Also, two layers of diapers taped together and two old towels.

 

 

Princess at Thorn Tree

 

Our second night on the road Princess had to stay in the car.  We set her up with her litter box and food / water dishes.  She made herself at home!  When I went out to take a shower in the dark, I stopped to check on her.  She rubbed up on the window where I was shining the flash light in wanting to loved on.

 

 

On our trips to and from Lusaka we always pass this place.  Others had told us how nice it is, but it is never lunch time when we pass and we don't want to wait for food to be made on our already 13 hour trips.  It was lunch time and so we stopped.  The food was wonderful and the bathrooms the best I have seen on our road trips in Zambia.

 

We ate under a nice shade tree.  Since we couldn't park under a shade tree,  Princess joined us on the bench.

 

 

Princess in Lusaka

 

 

Steve had Princess at the airport by 5 AM on Sunday, May 15th.  She was dropped off at a building where they ship cargo from.  She had to fly a day early in order to land in Philly at the same time we did.  Animals need to be at the airport five hours before their flight.  Our stop over in Qatar was only two hours and she needed to be there five hours.  So she went on a day ahead of us.

 

We left Lusaka Monday morning on a 7AM flight.  We flew to Johannesburg, South Africa. 

 

 

 

Here we enjoyed lunch at Mugg & Bean!

 

We then flew east to Qatar as we were flying Qatar Airways.  It was a nice plane and airport.  We landed at 11PM and flew out at 1AM, so we cannot tell you anything about what the landscape looks like.  We landed in Philly on Tuesday morning.

 

My poor Dad arrived an hour after our flight was suppose to land and spent the next two hours waiting for us.  We landed late.  Then the wait to go through immigration took forever.  That was the longest time we have ever spent waiting in immigration lines for all of our trips over and back.  There were only two immigration agents on duty!  So it was after 10AM before we called Dad to drive up and pick us up.

 

A side note: we do not ever have a phone that works in the US when we land.  We carry quarters to use a pay phone to call my dad who is sitting in a waiting parking lot with a big screen up front with the flights on it.  There is a bay of five phones near the doors leaving the airport. 

 

 I used all five phones to call him.  First phone: dial the number and they tell you how much money to pay only to find out the coin box is full and so you cannot use this phone.  Second phone same problem.  Third phone worked, I could hear him, he couldn't hear me.  So actually the mouth piece was broken.  Fourth phone: money box full again.  Fifth phone: finally success!  At that point I almost had my Dad's cell phone number memorized!

 

I will leave picking up the cat :(  for the next blog, it was not easy!!!