Question for ya: What do you do when your airline partner of 2.5 years and flown 910 cats with stops flying live animals out of Hawai’i?
KEEP GOING.
This news presented a challenge like no other we’ve encountered. Our Operation Aloha Cat program, which was built on the Aloha Air Cargo partnership, was turned on its head when Aloha Air Cargo told us in early May that they would no longer be flying cats out of Maui to Seattle as of June 1st.
WOAH. We had about six weeks to figure out how we were going to continue on without missing a beat.
Prior to that, we were flying twice a month with Aloha with 12 kennels on each flight. Time to pivot. I will admit, it was a lot.
Personally, I spent hours on the phone, pushing my way through information and paperwork and had SO MANY sleepless nights from worry. Right up until we were going through the pretty hilarious logistical nightmare/organized chaos of having TSA check 27 cats and their carriers, I was unsure if we were actually going to pull it off. Being awake from 3AM-5AM HST to ensure I was available for any unforeseen issues as the cats arrived at SEA-TAC with our amazing volunteer was worth it. Losing sleep from logistics is different than losing sleep from worry and I look forward to doing it again!
WE WILL KEEP GOING.
This is a more expensive process. Thousands more. All in this one was around 5K (and not including supplies that we already owned, etc.)
We are committed to our partners. Our partner @Honi Honi Cats Maui has many kitties waiting to fly and we couldn’t leave them hanging. So we will continue this new process for as long as we can fund it!
HUGE MAHALO to our partners:
And to our Good Cat Network vet tech Kelli Uderitz who flew the cats all the way to Seattle, assisting with logistics on the ground and documented the process!