Domestic cat 'Jon Snow' repatriated to the Philippines with his owner

Filipinos working abroad in countries adjacent to the Philippines are unable to get back to their home country because they stopped commercial flights due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Philippines government have stepped in to organise their own flights which I presume are chartered. They are 'sweeping up' the various overseas workers and then flying them back to the Philippines. Six of the workers are from the Yangon region of Myanmar and in all 55 Filipinos from Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand are being repatriated. The Philippine embassy in Yangon is apparently making the arrangements. This is the fifth government sponsored flight of this kind.

Jon snow thank you and in carrier. Photo: Twitter.

Jon Snow the cat repatriated from Myanmar to the Philippines. Image: Twitter.

Welcome back to the Philippines, Jon Snow White! 😺

A domestic short-haired cat named Jon Snow White is the first pet to be repatriated to the Philippines due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

READ: https://t.co/N8v6dg1Nnt pic.twitter.com/C8XKrUerOQ

— Philstar.com (@PhilstarNews) June 1, 2021

The point of the story though is that one of the passengers wanted to bring her cat back and they wouldn't allow it because of the pandemic. The overseas Filipino worker concerned is Karen Vinalay and her cat is Jon Snow. I presume that he was named after the British television presenter. She wrote to Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. and made a special request. Others had been similarly denied the opportunity to bring their pets home. The minister responded positively and included Jon Snow on the flight. We are not told whether he or she extended the exception to the rules to the other pets.

It seems not because a tweet on Twitter asks the government to do the same for the other pets.