Fat Cat Gets a Passport

In preparation for our flight back to the US in December, Sam got a passport. This is not a sign of us going over the deep end--we're flying out of Paris, and all pets in the EU are required to have a pet passport for cross-border travel, so 38 Euros later Sam is now in the system :) And according to the system, she is a German cat!

The vet around the corner from our house filled it out using Sam's US paperwork--all of the vets and assistants dropped by the exam room to see her interesting American records. I was much more impressed with the EU-Pass, though. (Side note: Although the front says 'Heimtierausweis', the Germans just refer to it as der EU-Pass (said 'eh-oo pass'). This was yet another give-away that I'm not a native speaker, if the accent and moderately poor grammar didn't make it clear!) The passport includes pages for identifying information (owner, breed and coloring, microchip number and injection site) as well as vaccinations. There are also pages for health certifications, which is a great improvement over the pages and pages of certified documents that were required to get her over here! The passport lasts the lifetime of the animal, so as long as we keep it updated Sam can travel in the EU again with (theoretically) less hassle.