all for winrey

jeremy and i got winrey yesterday!!! so before i go into what we had to do, i will give you a little background:

we have been trying to get winrey since the middle of december. we wanted to wait until we were pretty much fully settled in to our new place before having her come out because we didnt want her to be more nervous than she already would have been. we booked her a flight through delta for the 18th of december having her arriving in stuttgart the 19th. so roberta took her in to the air force academy vet clinic to get a health certificate and an international health certificate. the vet wasnt completely sure on germany's rules about rabies vaccinations and said that she might have to be quarantined when she gets here if they dont accept the 3 yr rabies vacc. the vet did all of the checks and gave roberta the paperwork and roberta left. i looked online and found out that germany does in fact only accept the 1 yr rabies shot and that if winrey was sent here they would refuse her entry!! i was not happy. i thought the vet should have definitely checked on something like that and not just assumed she would just be stuck in quarantine. so i called roberta and let her know that she needed to have a rabies shot and with that we would have to wait 30 days for her to fly. so the next day roberta went in and got her a shot. a couple of weeks later i tried booking her a flight through delta again for the 22nd of january. we got everything good to go and the woman told me that it was going to be almost $700!! i got off the phone because the lady was already being rude to me and i didnt feel like getting into it over the price. the next day i decide that i am going to call and ask why it was so much when not even a month ago it was half that price. i spoke to someone and she couldnt tell me anything. i explained that it was the same cat, same kennel size, same weight, same departure city, layover, and destination city. i told her that $700 was a little ridiculous and if someone wanted to pay that much to ship a cat that she might as well have a seat on the plane! she really didnt know what to say and just asked if there was anything else she could help me out with. hahaha i NEVER ever have enough courage to say things like that! pregnancy can do some amazing things =)! after crossing delta off our list we had to find another airlines but the problem with other airlines is that they dont all fly into stuttgart, and we would have to drive to frankfurt. so we finally chose united airlines. they charge a fixed amount per kilogram and some other little fees and the ticket was going to be even cheaper than delta's first price! everything was set from there; got a new vet check for a 10 day certificate, she was going to leave the 22nd, arrive in frankfurt on the 23rd and we had a rental car reservation(since our car wasnt working)! BUT! could anything ever go as planned? i think not! the morning of her flight barney's(jeremys grandpa) truck wouldnt start so they couldnt make it to the flight! i was so crushed! we now had to figure out another day to ship her out that was within the 10 days for the health certificate to be good. and of course, we couldnt. it expired on that next thursday so we would have had to pick her up that thursday and that was the last day it would have been good. but jeremy couldnt take the day off because he had friday off for a training holiday! we figured out that she would have to get another vet check and we could ship her out that next week. that was the last thing we could do. so barney took her in to get the new certificate. everyday since the last flight we tried rebooking and there was always a restriction in denver and they dont even book when there is a restriction. finally on saturday, the 30th of jan, we got her a flight booked for wednesday, the 3rd of feb. on monday jeremy wanted me to call them back and book her flight for tuesday so she would be here wednesday. this was my original idea but jeremy didnt listen. i figured if anything went wrong on tuesday that we would still have one day left to try again! anyway, so i called and rescheduled and jeremy got a rental car and the day off for wednesday! i was happy but also very nervous something was going to go wrong!

well, it is now wednesday, the day to pick her up! we woke up at 6:30am and got ready and caught the 7:50am bus to patch. we got there about a half hour before the rental car place opened so we went to the commissary and got a few things, got money out of the atm, and waited about 5 or so minutes for the place to open. we got everything settled and we were on our way! it was really nasty outside. raining a lot and then it started snow/rain mix so we had to take it easy on the autobahn. we passed by one accident and then we got in a traffic jam because of another accident. it was a very long, slow jam. jeremy and i both had to pee really bad and it took us forever to get to an exit that had bathrooms. but we finally did and both felt relieved. =) anyway, so we finally get to the airport. we had to check into this place so we can get a temporary gate card to go to the cargo center. and the temp card can only be used at one gate. lame! so we got the first place we needed to be to pick up her import documents. we had to pay 20 euro for those. then we had to go all the way across to another gate where she actually was to get her vet checked. i was really irritated that we had to get her vet checked when we went through all the stuff we did to get her health certificates! we had to wait about 20 minutes for that to be done and pay 73 euro. then we had to go to a whole other gate to customs to get the paperwork cleared through them. we had to wait a bit for that and then we had to go back to where she was and show them paperwork and pay a 30 euro storage fee and get the documents to actually pick her up. after all of that we went outside and waited for someone to bring her out! so the whole process at the airport took us about 3 hrs! it was horribly exhausting. she looked really scared but when we were in the car on the way home she seemed to be doing fine. only crying a little bit when i talked to her. i felt really bad that she had to wait another couple of hours to be out of her kennel. we had to make a pit stop on another base to get her litter, food, and a litter box. then we were on our way home! once we got on our base jeremy wanted to stop at the commissary because he wanted to make nachos since he had been wanting them for a couple of days. while he was in there literally like a minute before he got back to the car to leave winrey peed in her kennel. we were seriously like 2 minutes from the house, but she probably just couldnt hold it anymore which is understandable! if i was shoved in a kennel for more than 24 hrs i would pee myself too! when we got home we put her in the bathroom where it is nice and warm and let her out. i got her food and water and then we bathed her. when we were done we tried drying her off with a hair dryer and she was NOT happy about that. she was hissing, growling, and trying to bite! so we gave up and towel dried her as much as we could. we let her just chill in the bathroom for a while since it was really warm in there and she needed to be dry before heading out to the other part of the house. i felt bad but it needed to be done. i would go in there and hang out with her and try to dry her off even more. she was almost all the way dry and we finished drying her off with the hair dryer. we let her out and she roamed the house crying. she would jump up on us for like a second and start purring only to jump down again to do more exploring. she seemed fine with everything and stopped crying after only a few minutes. when we went to bed she came up and laid with us. she got off a bit after but then jeremy said she came back up and slept with him for a while. i woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and she was lying at the end of the bed. it was great to know that she remembered us and wasnt hiding.

this morning i woke up and she came out from under the loveseat and sat next to me. i tried getting her so i could put her on the window sill so she could look outside but for some reason she didnt want me to pick her up. i finally got her and put her up there and she got down a couple of minutes later, went over to her water thing and knocked it over! so i had to clean that up! what a little booger! she has been following me everywhere and comes up and sits next to me to cuddle and such. she is such a lover. hehee

i am so glad that we finally got her! i am also very grateful to jeremy's mom and family for taking care of her for so long! it was nice to know she was in great hands and being well taken care of! =)