Friday, December 02, 2005

Today's "Awwwwwwwww..." Story


Emily the stowaway cat lands in Wisconsin
By Ryan Nakashima, Associated Press
MILWAUKEE — Emily the cat is back — after flying home in the lap of luxury. The curious cat who wound up traveling to France in a cargo container touched down at the Milwaukee airport on Thursday, greeted by her family and a horde of reporters.
Emily flew back to the USA in a $6,000 seat provided by Continental Airlines. A Continental cargo agent handed her over to 9-year-old Nick Herndon, son of the cat's owners, Donny and Lesley McElhiney. Emily meowed and pawed at reporters' microphones as the family answered questions.
Emily vanished from her Appleton home in late September. She apparently wandered into a nearby paper company's distribution center and crawled into a container of paper bales.
The container went by truck to Chicago and by ship to Belgium before the cat was found Oct. 24 at Raflatac, a laminating company in Nancy, France. Workers there used her tags to phone her veterinarian, who called the McElhineys.
Continental offered to fly the cat home from Paris after Emily's tale spread around the world and she cleared a one-month quarantine.
On her flight home, Emily passed up a menu of peppered salmon filet and "opted for her French cat food" and some water, airline spokeswoman Courtney Wilcox said.
Apparently all that French food did Emily some good.
"She's bigger and heavier than before," Nick said.

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