If you’ve ever packed a car for a long road trip with household pets underfoot, you’ve likely had a fleeting fear about them getting packed up along with everything else.
That fear became a reality for a family of five from St. Albans, Maine! In July, 2022, Andrea Scholten and her family packed up their pop-up camper to make a 900 mile road trip to the 2022 EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in Wisconsin. With all the confusion, they didn’t realize the family cat, Delilah, had slipped into the camper with them.
They had made it all the way to Toledo, Ohio before they stopped for the night, opened the camper, and discovered their stowaway passenger.
“I open the door, and there’s Delilah,” Andrea recalled. “I just screamed ‘Delilah!’ and my husband and the kids were like ‘Delilah!’ So, we went to Target, we bought her food, litter, a collar that we could write her name on because we were completely unprepared for this.”
Andrea had already planned to document their trip to the air show on Facebook, so she added a post to the event’s Facebook page with the hashtag #stowawayoshkoshcat. The post blew up, and before they even arrived in Oshkosh Delilah was on her way to becoming a local celebrity.
“We put a story up with a photo of her and people thought it was hysterical,” the cat mom explained. “They were commenting ‘We want more Delilah,’ so we did. Every day a couple of times a day I would put up a post and we used the hashtag. People loved Delilah.”
The event organizers even honored their unexpected guest with a skywriting drawing that looked a bit familiar! She was such a big hit, they’ve decided to bring her back next year. Invited, this time!
After leaving the air show, the family swung by Niagara Falls on the way back to Maine. Delilah seemed to enjoy every moment of her journey, and her family found they loved having her along with them, too.
Hey, cats need a change of scenery sometimes, too! Maybe this story will inspire other cat owners to bring their feline friends along on their next road trip. Then again… maybe not!
Share this story with anyone who’s ever brought something, or someone, unexpected along on a trip.
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