PET SHOP:Jenny Schutz flew her three cats from Amsterdam to Dublin when she was relocating, at a whopping cost of €1,400, writes Michael Kelly
WHEN JENNY SCHUTZ was returning to live in Ireland after 10 years running an Irish pub in Germany, the most stressful part of the move was relocating her three cats - Tiger, Tom and Blackie.
"It was the most stressful day of my life," she says of a mad dash through Schiphol, Heathrow and Dublin airports carrying three travel crates. "Not all airlines and not all airports will take pets, so I had to fly through Amsterdam, which meant a three-hour car journey from Germany."
Transporting pets is an expensive business - on top of pre-departure veterinary bills (and a six-month wait to have them certified rabies-free), the flight costs for the three moggies amounted to a whopping €1,400. Her own flight cost just €80.
Given the stress and expense involved, did it ever occur to her to leave them behind? "It entered my head, but I love them too much. In my view if you take on a pet, you take them on and that's it. I would say to people if they are planning a move to a foreign country any time in the future that they should think about it carefully before getting a pet."
All three of her cats were rescued. The eldest, Tiger, arrived in the beer-garden of the pub Schutz was running, starving and frightened. "We used to open the pub at 5am and she used to arrive at that time every day looking for food. We were living in an apartment over the pub and she became an indoor cat. She was lonely though - she would sit at the door waiting for me to come home from work at four in the morning." Schutz found Tiger two companions - kittens Tom and Blackie - at a local cat sanctuary where she was volunteering.
One of the kittens, Tom, was found abandoned in a box by a motorway and possibly because of this difficult start to life, he is a voracious eater. So much so that Schutz recently had to do the unthinkable - put him on a diet. "The vet gave me a right talking to, saying he was overweight and it was going to cause him problems. He loves his food - he would eat all his own food and then tuck in to theirs. He is on a special diet of 26g of prescription feed, morning and evening, and I have to separate them when I am feeding - that's an extra chore. He's gone from 6.4k to 4.6k and the difference in him is incredible - he can scale walls and do all that good cat-stuff again."
Schutz abandoned the pub business on her return to Ireland and is now fundraiser with the Irish Blue Cross, which promotes responsible pet ownership and provides veterinary care through mobile clinics for pet-owners on low incomes. "I feel like I really landed on my feet here. I am working every day for the good of animals and I get tremendous satisfaction from that."
www.bluecross.ie