Missing cat found in owner's suitcase

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. - The last time cat-owner Kelly Levy saw her tiger-striped feline was before she took her husband to the airport. The 24-year-old came back to her house late Friday to find the bottom step, where Gracie Mae would usually be waiting, empty.

Levy tore the house apart looking for the 10-month-old tabby who had been spayed just days before. She and her dad took out bathroom tiles and part of a cabinet to check a crawl space and papered the neighborhood with "lost cat" signs.

"Hi, you're not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas, and I accidentally picked up your husband's luggage. And when I opened the luggage, a cat jumped out," Levy recalled the caller saying, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

Rob Carter, of Fort Worth, told The Dallas Morning News for its online edition Tuesday that he made it home with the suitcase.

"I went to unpack and saw some of the clothes and saw it wasn't my suitcase," Carter said. "I was going to close it, and a kitten jumped out and ran under the bed. I screamed like a little girl."

Carter said that he eventually was able to get the cat to come out from under the bed.

"In the morning, I got close enough to see its collar and the phone number on it," he said. "So I called the number and got a hold of the crying wife of the traveler."

Gracie Mae had crawled into Seth Levy's black suitcase undetected, been put through an X-ray machine, loaded onto an airplane, thrown onto a baggage claim conveyor belt and picked up by a stranger.

Carter delivered Gracie Mae to Seth Levy and the tabby made the 1,300-mile trip home on an $80 plane ticket Sunday night.

"If I couldn't have found a good home, I would have kept it," he said. "We were going to name it Suitcase."

seriously! When I flew at Thanksgiving, they opened my bag and unwrapped every Christmas package, ripping paper like it was Christmas morning, then wound a bit of TSA tape around them...this process made the bag not make my flight, and they had to deliver it to me. Why didn’t they go through a bag that must have looked like it had a dead cat in it?

However, the story probably wouldn’t have had a happy ending if they had. Kitty would have hopped out at the airport, and with no beds to hide under, who knows where she would have ended up. Her clueless daddy might have gotten in trouble for transporting her in a suitcase too.

Glad she is home and safe with her kitty parents. :)

Nothing comes into my house that’s not inspected by The Chief Inspector, my Manx cat. (Rescued and adopted from the dumpster at my cousin’s workplace).

I can’t make my bed or change the bedding without her instantly springing into action and becoming a big lump under the sheets and blankets. Sometimes I just leave her trapped under the fitted sheet and she eventually finds her way out after chasing anything that touches the top sheet or blanket. I’ve learned to always have a heavy blanket covering my feet which she attacks, claws and bites at the slightest move.

I can’t open a drawer or cabinet door without her jumping in it. She likes to sleep in open drawers. She totally ignores her expensive, soft pet beds to sleep all over the house in the most uncomfortable places. (I can’t be the only one here with a million pictures of my sleeping cat).

Once when my cousin was doing her laundry, she put a load of clothes into the dryer and turned it on, but it was making a funny sound, “thumpity, thump,......thumpity, thump”, she checked and a very frightened cat shot out of the dryer. She had jumped into the dryer sight unseen. She doesn’t go near it now.

You can’t go to the bathroom without her jumping in the sink for a drink of running water or a nap in the sink while she waits for you.

Long story (I’m not very good at condensation):

1 weekend my parents and I went up to their house neighboring my uncle’s farm (this is 2 hrs away from real home). We brought our German Shepherd, Shana, of course.

The new house was built on an old farmhouse basement still intact, but the door to that basement didn’t close and lock in decades. It was hard to close, getting stuck on the floor, and many times people left it open when there.

Anyway, after arriving and leaving Shana theoretically in the main floor (supposedly basement entrance closed; I don’t remember), we went grocery shopping. Driving up by the house at night, I saw that door open and alarms went up (as if the door was ever closed). I went into the house, called for “Shana” maybe a few times. No response. I ran out of the house and shouted to my parents that Shana wasn’t in the house, and she probably ran out that door, etc. We called around a bit and got no response.

So the frenzy started. My dad took 1 car all the way out back to the Interstate and drove back and forth calling for her, some 15 miles around. Mom and I went driving the other car up and down the local valley calling for her. I had sounded the alarm at my uncle’s house and my younger cousins were riding their bikes back and forth down the valley and beating on neighbor’s doors asking for help and if they’d seen this German Shepherd.

I was hysterical. I remember crying so hard while riding with my mom about losing this dog. I was beside myself. Worry about her being lost in a place she hardly knew so far from home, about bear traps, and hunters in the area, other animals on the farms, etc. Oh, man, was I inconsolable!

Mom drove back to the house and we continued calling. I walked around the house. Though much of the house was dark, I thought I noticed something in 1 of the bedroom windows. Back in the house, I went to that room (I used it myself) and pushed open the door – and standing there was Shana, wagging her tail!

Now how stupid I felt! I hadn’t even checked the house before dashing out because she “hadn’t responded” and assuming she got out that basement! I was greatly relieved, but mortified at all the effort put out for the “lost” dog.

I don’t know why Shana didn’t make much effort to get to me when I called (she was a very good dog who would run back to you right away) – no whimper or whining or scraping at the door when she couldn’t get to me. Or maybe I left too fast to generate that desperation from her!

Anyway, the basic problem here was the bedroom door – that door is not aligned properly, and with no rug or anything to stop the door, gravity pulls it quickly back to the “closed” (but not engaged) position. Shana had been in “my” bedroom and must’ve stayed behind when I left that room; or maybe she poked in at some point and then found herself “trapped”.

Anyway, that’s the whole story of the un-lost dog! It still makes the cousins and us laugh to think how quick to jump to conclusions we were – and all the havoc it caused in a country valley at night!

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