Am I the only one following the saga of Emily the Cat?
Also,
why am I following the saga of Emily the Cat? It's the sort of story that warms my little cockles, so I guess that's why.
Emily the cat to return from France
The Post-Crescen
APPLETON — Emily the cat will be jetting home to Appleton in a couple of days.
And instead of traveling by ship in a cargo container like she did to get to Nancy, France, about 175 miles east of Paris, she’s coming home courtesy of Continental Airlines, and likely first class.
Emily leaves France on Thursday, and “she should be home Friday,” owner Lesley McElhiney said.
Lesley and Donny McElhiney and their two children, Abbey Herndon, 5, and Nicholas Herndon, 9, thought they’d have to drive to Chicago to pick her up, but Emily apparently will be delivered to their door by a Continental employee who lives in the area.
“She is precious cargo now,” Lesley McElhiney said.
Continental was one of the first of many companies and individuals, along with Federal Express, to offer help after The Post-Crescent first recounted Emily's story Oct. 27.
Lesley said Raflatac, a laminating company in Nancy, France, that found Emily, thin and thirsty in a container of paper bales, has also said it will pay the $7 a day quarantine fees.
The company traced her through the tags she was wearing to the McElhineys by calling Emily’s veterinarian.
“We’ve hardly done anything. Everybody else put the wheels in motion,” Lesley said.
Lesley has said that Emily, who has spent time in an animal shelter before after wandering away, will be grounded when she returns.
“Thirty days time out,” she said.
Lesley said the family does not plan to let Emily roam outside again, but that she is crafty. “She hides when the door is opening, but she knows when your hands are full.”
The return of the famous feline will create mixed reactions among the rest of the household.
“I think they are going to do a countdown in my kindergartener’s classroom,” Lesley said.
But the reaction from the family’s other two cats, 11-year-old Tori and 7-year-old Ringo, won’t be as welcome. The year-old – she actually had her birthday on Oct. 24, the day she was discovered in France – is a little too active for the older cats.
“They’re not going to be so excited,” Lesley said.
And even though Raflatac employees had named her Raflacat, and Lesley now sometimes refers to her as “the diva,” there won’t be a name change in her future.
Here's where it began, a month ago:
Cat’s crate escape ends 4,200 miles from home
From Charles Bremner in Paris
EMILY, a young cat from Wisconsin, has earned herself a place in feline history by wandering from her American home and turning up three weeks later 4,200 miles away in France.
Workers at a paper lamination plant near the eastern city of Nancy found Emily, frightened and hungry, inside a container of paper bales that had been sealed in Wisconsin and shipped by road and sea across America, the Atlantic and France. A collar tag identified the stowaway as belonging to the McElhiney family of Appleton, who had given her up for lost.
Le chat Americain, as France is calling her, became a star yesterday with her picture on the front page of the Appleton newspaper, photo sessions with the French media, and offers from admirers to pay for her trip home.
Emily’s most impressive achievement was surviving for three weeks apparently without food and water. John Palarski, the Wisconsin vet who called the family on Monday to report Emily’s reappearance, said he believed that she must have had water and been able to catch mice on board ship. But the Raflatac company, which found her, said that the container had nothing inside except the bales. The cat had apparently consumed its own waste.
Christèle Gozillon, a spokeswoman for Raflatac, said: “We received a container from Wisconsin full of bales of adhesive paper. We heard a cat miaowing. It was a real surprise. We opened the container gently and a little, very frightened, cat ran and hid in the lorry engine. We saw that it had a name and an address so we contacted the veterinary services and they got in touch with the owners. She has become the company mascot. We call her Raflacat.”
In Appleton, Lesley McElhiney said: “She has run away before. The only thing we can think right now is buying a plane ticket. She’s getting to be an expensive little thing.”
