When Donny and Lesly McElhiney, from Appleton, Wisc., discovered their cat Emily was missing, they scoured their neighborhood for her, but had no success. It turns out that Emily had apparently wandered into a nearby paper company’s distribution center and crawled into a container of paper bales. That container went by truck to Chicago, and then on to Belgium by ship. The feline was finally discovered at a laminating company in France, where workers used the cat’s tags to phone her veterinarian, who promptly called the McElhineys. Continental Airlines offered to fly Emily home from Paris after her story made headlines and she was cleared after a one-month quarantine. A full-fare ticket for Emily’s seat would normally cost about $6,000, and the airline even provided an escort, cargo agent Gaylia McLeod (pictured below), to accompany Emily aboard a 50-seater from Newark to Milwaukee. On her flight home, Emily passed up a menu of pepper salmon filet and opted for her French cat food and some water. After flying home in the lap of luxury, a Continental cargo agent handed her over to 9-year-old Nick, son of the cat’s owners. “She seems a little calmer than she was before, just a little quieter, a little, maybe, wiser,” said Lesly. Hopefully, Emily has had her fill of international travel.
