Flight Attendants Can’t Figure Out Where Cat Loose on Plane for Hours Came From

Traveling with pets can be incredibly stressful. In addition to alerting the airline, making sure you have the right documentation, and going through security and other airport checkpoints, there’s also the pet’s well-being to consider. After all, spending hours cooped up in a small carrier is bound to make even the most well-behaved pet a bit restless. 

On a recent flight from New York, one cat decided he had enough and started wandering the aisles of the plane. 

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TikTok user greygoose_ontherocks shared a video of a flight attendant holding the very well-behaved kitty and asking around for the cat’s guardian. Another flight attendant announces over the intercom, “So we’re still looking for the owner of this cat.” Apparently, no one had any idea who the cat belonged to. The search continued for quite some time; the video’s caption says that the cat was loose and unclaimed for hours. 

Later on in the video, a third flight attendant holds the cat up, asking, “Whose cat is this?” to a crowd of curious airline passengers. Several of them also hold up their phones to take their own footage of this unexpected and delightful moment. 

There is no overall federal law regarding pets in airline cabins. Instead, individual airlines have their own policy for pets on flights. Most airlines require pets to be in carriers that follow the federal regulation rules for carry-on baggage. There are some airlines that do not require service animals to be in carriers, though. Still, those animals must usually be leashed, harnessed, or tethered in some way. And animals must always be registered with the airline before travel. No matter how this kitty originally came to be on the flight, he definitely pulled some escape artist tricks to get to the aisles. 

Jay (bythejay on TikTok), the flight attendant holding the cat in the video, even chimed in the comments section. 

“This flight was a first for sure,” they wrote. 

After the original poster praised their careful and gentle cat handling, Jay mentioned that they previously worked at a vet clinic. Though they’re not a cat parent themselves at this moment in time, they want one “so bad.” Maybe this airplane cat is a sign. 

Thankfully, the mystery of the wandering airplane cat was solved a few hours later. It turned out that the cat’s guardian had been fast asleep during the announcements, so she completely missed all the hullabaloo about her sneaky kitty. A fellow passenger — with no association with the cat or the parent — watched over the cat till the cat’s mom woke up and realized that her cat had become an in-flight celebrity. According to Yahoo News, the cat’s mom admitted that she unzipped the carrier slightly so that the kitty could poke his head out. 

Understandable — but definitely a fair warning to anyone traveling with cats. Those little fellows can get out of anything. So if you’re letting your cat just take a breather, make sure to stay awake, lest your cat end up all over the plane and on TikTok.