COVID-19 & Travel
As most of you know, I’m an avid traveller. Any chance I get, I’m off somewhere new or visiting old friends across the globe. And this year was to be no different: I’d saved up for flights to Melbourne, Australia, in May to visit my life-long bestie who had moved there one year earlier. We’d even booked flights within Oz for a girls’ trip to Sydney. I’d bought a guide book, we’d booked accommodation and my friend had put together a packed itinerary for what would’ve been an almost two-week trip. But alas, COVID-19 threw a spanner in the works and I, like many others, was left disappointed, with cancelled flights, broken dreams and no sign of a refund from a not-to-be-named French-Dutch airline with incomparable customer service…
Whilst most of Europe’s borders reopened ahead of summer, I made no further plans to go abroad. I mean, we’re in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic, so I figured travel could wait. In any case, I had hoped to maybe visit friends and family in Northern Ireland during my holidays in August, having not seen them since Christmas, but then the whole continent seemed to turn on Luxembourg. The Grand Duchy was deemed a “high-risk” zone, despite the fact that the country was testing significantly more than others – I personally have been tested four times now, free of charge.
Pets in Lockdown
Since travel was off the table, I turned my attention to another passion of mine: animals. My boyfriend and I had considered getting a dog for a while (I also wanted a cat but we weren’t sure if BF was still allergic or if we wanted an indoor or outdoor cat, etc.) before Luxembourg entered lockdown in mid-March. Since I mostly work from home anyway and he was now working remotely indefinitely due to the pandemic, it seemed like the perfect time to get a pet. This post is the first in my “Pet Diaries” series.
Despite always advocating (I still do) the “adopt don’t shop” message, we checked out various local animal shelters as well as a German website with a list of breeders. In the end, we decided to get a puppy and a kitten, in the hope that they would get on better if they grew up together than an adult dog and cat might.
We quickly decided on either a Labrador or a Golden Retriever pup, since we had some previous experience with these breeds and they are traditionally very family- (and pet-) friendly. Things were slightly more complicated with the cat, since BF was unsure if he still had an allergy; I didn’t care much about the breed since I love pretty much all cats, but we searched for “hypoallergenic” cat breeds to play it safe. We found a suitable (and adorable) female Golden Retriever puppy and male Siberian kitten, but our search ended in disappointment when the cat breeder made a last-minute demand that we adopt at least two of her kittens – a time and money investment we just could not make at this time. In the end, we found a perfect Maine Coon kitten: a woman in Germany was giving away (for a small fee considering this was a pedigree Maine Coon) a few kittens from her pet Maine Coon’s recent litter. With this not being a “hypoallergenic” breed, we decided to visit first to confirm the remaining female kitten was the right fit. And so, as soon as Germany’s borders with Luxembourg reopened in May, we went to visit both the kitten and the puppy. On the same day of our Maine Coon visit, we brought our new kitten home! BF appeared to no longer be allergic to cats and the kitten was already toilet-trained and weaned, aged 11 weeks.
Fighting like Cat & Dog…
Nala was an absolute angel in the 2.5-hour car ride back to Luxembourg and we introduced her to her grandmother (BF’s mum) and canine aunts (her Labrador and Golden Retriever) that same day. We did make the mistake of keeping her crated when meeting the two older dogs though, which resulting in her hissing and swiping at them from her cage – the seven-year-old Labrador is still a bit scared of her… On the kitten’s part, curiosity gradually overcame caution and she became more and more comfortable around them (and even more so later with her younger puppy sibling – more on that to come!).
Nala was quick to settle in her new home and the next day, BF’s mum catsat whilst we visited our Goldie puppy, Elfi. We also got to meet her very sweet, white-coated Golden Retriever mother and her siblings. She was so small and was asleep for most of our short visit. A few weeks later, aged 8 weeks, Elfi was welcomed home by her new family – including her initially suspicious feline sister! After a few days of playing dead and letting Nala come to her, Elfi’s confidence grew and after a few weeks of being swiped / hissed at by Nala, they slowly developed a relationship not dissimilar to that of human siblings: some days they would play or sleep next to one another, other days Nala would grow tired of her energetic younger sister – who was rapidly outgrowing her in size (and appetite)!
