Tales from Taberno

Date 18-7-2006 Tuesday
After paying the vets at Wetherby the thick end of £400 for the cats to be chipped, have ant-rabies injections and then doing further blood tests to ensure that they have taken., we finally received The Cats Passports. Later this evening whilst swotting up on the route to the Manchester Cargo Terminal for the cats, I noted on the cats tickets that the vets have to either sign page 28 of the Passports of have to issue a letter to the effect that the animal is fit to fly. When I looked at page 28 of both Passports it is blank. Elayne phoned the vets who said that they had never done this before and that we would have to take both cats up once more to be examined and passed as ‘fit to fly‘, the only remaining time left to do this being whilst we are trying to move out tomorrow morning. The additional fee for this basic service is yet another £40.
Now excuse me for thinking perhaps the vets should have done this all before we spent the first £400. What happens at this eleventh hour when the whole process has now cost £400 plus a further £800 for all our tickets and car hire if said very professional vet says that one of the cats is ‘not fit to fly’. We are stranded in the UK with no house, duff tickets to Spain and £1200 less well off for the pleasure. Can you imagine arriving homeless, all packed and fully laden at Manchester , just to be told that we can’t fly because the bloody stupid vet forgot to read the passport that they have just issued. I was furious at them for their total negligence. I would have gone up and played merry hell with the vets had it not been that the removal men were working in the house.