She’s not the newest member of the Spice Girls… Spice is a calico cat who spent three weeks in a shipping container without food or water and lived to meow the tale.
The Escamilla family was moving from Waikoloa Village, Hawaii to a new home in Southern California. While packing up a large shipping container, three year old Spice mysteriously disappeared. The family couldn’t find the cat before their flight to their new home, and kept calling neighbors back home to see if she’d turned up.
She didn’t.
It turns out Spice spent the nearly three week long journey across the Pacific inside the shipping container with no food or water. When the Escamillas opened the container eighteen days later in California, they found tufts of fur on the floor and feared the worst. As they frantically unpacked their worldly possessions, Spice poked her head up from behind some bicycles.
The family rushed Spice to the veterinarian, who said that things looked good. Spice did have some internal issues — her kidneys had shrunk and her bowels were backed up — but she managed to take a drink and a snack at the office. According to the doctor, calico cats have an especially strong survival instinct.
Maybe we should call her Survivor Spice?
Pet wrangling isn’t an easy thing when you’re planning a move. Here are some tips to help keep your pets safe while you pack up and travel:
- Keep your pets closed off in a separate room from where you are working.
- Make sure your pets wear collars with ID tags at all times.
- Walk your pets on a leash in unfamiliar areas — they may not know how to get back to you if they roam freely or make an escape.
- There’s plenty more travel information here at the Familes.com Pets Blog! Whether you’re going by car or by air, whether you’re moving a large pet or a small one, you can find it.