Cat customs

As we’ve now had the opportunity to clear into two different countries with our cat Samantha on board, I think it’s an appropriate time to follow up on my post How has having a cat changed your boating life. Coincidentally, the two countries that we have had to deal with, Trinidad and St. Vincent, are both known to be very strict when it comes to dogs. In fact, I think that most cruisers with dogs tend to give St. Vincent and the Grenadines a pass because of this. In spite of that, even though we indicated on all of the required paperwork that we had a cat on board with us, not a word was said by any agent. Of course, we were’t going to press the issue if the agents themselves didn’t care to, but it did surprise us that both countries seemed to ignore the cat altogether. Let’s hope that we have the same good fortune in the future.

Amazingly, many of these islands still use carbon paper for their official documents. It’s seems a bit ironic when we witness the agents checking their Facebook accounts on their laptops and smartphones while we’re filling out the forms.

Of course no one’s concerned about our little cat!