Flying pets into Australia is a nightmare!

NEWS AND COMMENT: There is a Facebook page providing advice on how to import pets into Australia by air (Petsflyingtoaustralia | Facebook). It is called Pets flying to Australia. The reason why there is an advice page on Facebook on this matter is because it is very complicated and troublesome. And, in my opinion, it is complicated and troublesome because the Australian authorities have a great fear of the importation of wild animals which may escape their owner's home and prey on native wildlife species. 

My distinct impression is that the Australian authorities are very risk averse when it comes to any importation of any non-native species, domestic or wild. The domestic cat is non-native to Australia.

Kucing and Amal. Photo: Brooke and John.

There is a story currently on the Internet which highlights this attitude. A couple of Australians, Brooke Jones and John Waskiw, had the temerity to apply to fly into Australia from Malaysia a couple of domestic, street cats. 

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The cats' names are Kucing and Amal. The importation by air process cost them AU$25,000 (US$17,692). And apparently their story is not unusual. Attempting to bring pets home means going through a lot of hoops and hurdles and includes paying massive bills, uncertainty, headaches and long waiting times. Clearly the authorities want to put people off importing domestic cats into Australia. That must be the underlying purpose.

John must've been working in Malaysia because it is said that he found Amal on the street near his workplace as the only survivor of a litter of kittens, the mother which is Kucing. When he was scheduled to return to Australia, he found that he couldn't leave the cats behind in Malaysia.

He fell in love with the cats. He said that he had no option but to bring them with him. He said that once you take them off the streets and look after them you have an obligation to care for them for the remainder of their lives. There is an argument which supports that. If you rescue a cat, it is said that you become the owner of that cat.

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In another story, Cielle spent AU$12,000 to get to Siamese-cross cats to Brisbane, Australia on a flight out of Los Angeles. She described the experience is very stressful. She said that when they saw her 84-year-old mother they stopped screaming! I can sense the stress that that entailed.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald.