The connection between flights in Frankfurt was a nightmare. First off, we landed approximately 20 minutes late. This wouldn't normally bother me, but there was only one hour between the flights, so it was tight. If you've ever been to Frankfurt airport, you'll know it's pretty huge. And our plane, due to the lateness of our arrival, had to park roughly 4 miles away from the terminal. So me and all the other passengers hopped on a bus headed for the terminal. Once we arrived, I realised I was still miles away from my gate. So I ran. For about ten minutes I weaved my way through the busy terminal to make my gate. By the time I got there, I was literally the last one to hand over my boarding pass. I've never been the last one at the gate before. As an English man, it is in my blood to arrive hours early and stand in line with all the other English people who don't realise the rest of the world don't give a toss about queuing.
I had made the flight with minutes to spare. As I sat down, I realised that there was no way that the cats were going to be on board this plane as well. I resigned myself to a nervous hour and a half of twiddling my thumbs and the inevitable disappointment and worry of having to find out where in Europe the cats had ended up, once I landed in Budapest.
After we landed, I gathered my things and got off the plane, and headed for the baggage area. I didn't really know where the cats would be, if they had indeed been put on the plane, so I thought the best thing to do would be to head to claim my luggage and hope that they would be there. B had phoned the airport a few days prior and they told her they would bring them out to meet me, but my in-built cynicism had already overridden this notion.
I got to the carousel and it wasn't long before colourful chunks of Samsonite were doing their merry dance. As the people grabbed their belongings and filtered off, I noticed a guy squatting down by the luggage window. As I looked to see what he was doing, I noticed he was cradling a cat basket. I immediately went over to him and in my best Englishman-abroad Hungarian I said 'err excuse me, that's my cat'. He handed the crate over to me and as he did, I realised that the clips which held the thing together were undone. The reason he'd been hugging it so affectionately wasn't because he'd had suffered a serious case of cuteness overload, but because Dibby could have escaped at any minute. I managed to fasten the crate back together, but the cat was so traumatised by her first experience of air travel that thankfully, she wasn't going anywhere anyway.
Once I'd made sure Dibby was safe, the guy handed Cosmo over. I then noticed that the handle on his crate had been completely snapped off. God knows what the baggage handlers had done with these cats, but they'd obviously been tossed around a fair bit.
I was very angry at this. I had been assured in London that the animals are 'treated like royalty' and that no harm would come to them. But they were alive, and here, so I decided just to make sure they were secure and get on with it. After all, it's not like I could make my complaint clear in my pigeon Hungarian.
So I turned round to collect my luggage and realised that everyone else had gone. There were a few lone Samsonite stragglers still doing the rounds but they obviously didn't belong to anyone in Budapest. But not my case. Oh dear. I don't own a lot of clothes, but my entire wardrobe was in there.
I headed off, with the moggies, to the lost baggage department. They spoke English fortunately, and I filled in a couple of forms. They assured me that my bag was most likely on a later flight as there are several a day coming from Frankfurt. Frankfurtly, I didn't care anymore. I had the cats, albeit completely in shock, and we'd made it.
I got through customs/security without one single question about whether the animals had the correct paperwork or not. We'd spent hundreds of pounds making sure we were legal, but it seems the Hungarian authorities really didn't care. I doubt it would be the same if we were returning them to England.
Finally, I got through to landside and was reunited with B. Never have I felt such relief in my life, all the worry of the past few days just melted away instantly. B's dad had come with her so we got in the car, and headed off to our new home. Later that evening, much later, we got a call from the airport to say they had my case, and they even brought it to our door. Everything was starting to work out...
The next 4 or 5 days however, some of that worry returned. The cats were not enjoying their new home as much as we were. Both of them found hiding places the minute we let them out, and that's were they stayed. They wouldn't eat, they wouldn't drink, and even more disturbingly, they hadn't used the bathroom for days. Slowly however, they recovered from their trauma, and they started to drink a little, and nibble a bit, and finally, met with rapturous cheering and applause from both of us, we began to hear the familiar scratching noises of a cat using a litter tray. I've never cheered a cat poop before, and probably won't ever again, but we knew things would be ok after that.
The cats have settled now, and even seem to enjoy their new home. They have new places to hide, new furniture to destroy and nice wooden floors to slide about on. Now that they've calmed down, we can finally concentrate on getting ourselves settled in. What will life be like here? Will I find a job ever? Will I be able to get my head around this bizarre language?
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