The first time I met Lola was during a night out in university. I was drunkenly making my way back home with a poorly structured kebab and she followed me. She was no bigger than my fist and looked as if she had been born inside of a drainage pipe — yet despite her size she kept pace. She followed me all the way back to my dorm, eating up the trail of meat and salad that I left in my wake all while bravely meowing into the night.
I never intended to keep her. Being drunk, I could scarcely plan past the next couple of hours. That night, however, I knew that Lola wasn’t going to spend the night sleeping on the street. The kitten was more than willing to hide in the pouch of my hoodie to get past the security guard. The hangover in the morning was brutal, but Lola’s purring made it bearable.
Lola spent the rest of the year being the worst kept secret in my student dorms and then the next three years being the cuddly mascot of the flat I rented with my classmates. I got my degree and qualifications and went on to become an IB certified biology teacher. I’d hop around the international school circuit on three year contracts and even though the culture and the continents changed — Lola remained a steady constant through my life.
It didn’t matter if it was hot or cold or if the apartments were clean or covered in geckos, Lola was happy as long as there was someone to scratch her behind the ears. A lot of the spots where I taught provided pretty steep hazard pay, and I’ve found myself in situations which I would rather have avoided but Lola was the one constant in my years of traveling. She was a little piece of home I got to carry around.
Nothing last forever though.
After fifteen years of keeping me company much of Lola’s body had given out. She was blind in one eye and limp in one paw and much of her day consisted of snoring on my lap. She would still meow with the same pitch of the kebab hungry kitten, but it was clear that Lola’s time was running out.
What made matters worse was that my three-year contract was about to run out as well. After three years of teaching in the International School of Islamabad I was set to start a three-year stint in Prague. The day of flights and layovers would surely kill Lola.
I couldn’t bare the idea of her having her final moments in the cargo hold of a plane. The thought of leaving her behind, however, was just as bad. Lola was old and confused. I hated the idea of her going into the night without my company.
Moving across the continent is hectic enough, but as the days counted down to my departure all I could think about was the question of Lola. I had colleagues who offered to adopt her and it was still possible to buy her a ticket but each day I put off that decision. I lost sleep worrying over what would happen to my cat and I guess she felt it somehow.
Three days before my flight, after a night of complications; Lola eased my burden.
She died.
She died and I held her paw and I felt that last thud of life leave her. At the vet’s office they offered to dispose of her body but I declined. Instead, I got Lola packed into an airtight plastic bag and took her home with me. I’d take her with me to Prague and get her cremated there.
She could keep traveling with me.
Turns out, however, that most conventional airlines aren’t okay with transporting last minute dead animals. My final two days in Islamabad were spent on the phone with every single airline that connect back to Prague. I repeated the story of her death over and over and over again until it had completely lost all meaning.
No dice. No airline would transport her. It started to seem like I would have to leave my Lola behind in shrink-wrap.
But then, on the twenty fifth page of Google, I found a company that was willing to transport Lola. They had no customer service number, nor could I find any mention of them on the internet beside their website — but their FAQ was clear:
Q: Can I transport dead animals on Morana Air flights?
A: Yes.
An option to purchase a pet ticket popped up.
I didn’t have much of a choice.
Even though the cat was dead, she still had to be transported inside of an animal container. When I dropped off Lola at the cargo depot the airport guards seemed really uncomfortable, but aside from that everything else went smoothly. I took my flight to London a few hours later and was in Prague by sunrise the next day. Took a couple calls, but eventually I found a pet cremation place that spoke English and understood my situation. Lola was due to arrive the following afternoon and the cremation place wasn’t far from the airport. It started to feel like everything had been figured out.
The problems didn’t start until I picked Lola up from the airport.
The smell was the first thing I noticed. Even from the hallway I could smell the undeniable stench of rot. It didn’t even occur to me that the smell could be tied to Lola’s body. It wasn’t until I got to the pick-up point that I realized something was terribly wrong. The airport worker was young and uncomfortable. First thing she said when she saw me was:
‘We tried giving her a bath but it didn’t help.’
The words scarcely connected to my brain before the carrier box was brought out. Two eyes stared at me from inside of the box but I scarcely recognized them. The dark green plastic packaging Lola was wrapped in lay shredded in the corner of the cage. The cat I was looking at looked like a carbon copy of Lola, but I didn’t recognize it.
The eyes were different.
I stood there in absolute shock, staring at the living cat in the box. I knew I had to say something to the attendant but no words came to me. I remained awestruck by the sight inside the box until the cat broke me out of the spell.
‘MNeOooOow!’ the creature moaned in a voice low with exhaustion.
I tried explaining to the attendant that this wasn’t my cat — that my cat was dead, yet she just nervously laughed. When I kept on insisting that what arrived in the box was not what was sent, she called her supervisor. The supervisor also nervously laughed for a bit, but then he said that my issue was with the airline. I was told to contact their customer service line.
I was also asked to leave the premises with my pet.
Throughout the whole argument, and through the whole bus ride back home the cat kept on meowing from inside of the box. It sounded nothing like Lola. It sounded like some horrid demon being exercised and yelling ‘Nooo’. The cat meowed through the whole bus ride back and everyone bunched up by the driver to escape the smell.
When I let the cat out of the box in my apartment it moved with a terrible swiftness. Lola calculated each step she took, but this creature rushed through the rooms like a guided missile. Once it scanned the room it jumped atop my kitchen counter, stared into my soul and proceeded to howl:
‘MNeOOOooOOw!’
I opened all the windows in the apartment and immediately set to finding the contact number for Morana Air customer support. As hard as I tried, however, I couldn’t find any trace of them online. The whole way through my fruitless search the cat kept on meowing. I tried to ignore the entire existence of the creature at first, but then it occurred to me that it might just be hungry.
When the first couple of Google pages didn’t return any results, I grabbed my coat and went downstairs to buy the cat some food. Getting out into the corner store helped me escape that terrible smell, but my clothes still stank like I rolled in a garbage heap. When I returned back to the apartment I gagged. The smell had soaked into everything I owned.
It won’t eat.
It won’t drink.
All the cat does is sit and stare and moan in those horrid low tones. It looks like my Lola, but I know better. I know that Lola drifted off to sleep on a chemical cocktail thousands of miles away. Whatever is sitting in front of me isn’t her. It might be using her body, but it isn’t her.
The e-mail confirmation about Lola’s ticket is linked to an e-mail address that’s a mix of random letters and numbers, my browser history shows no signs of this Morana Air and the people at the airport keep on hanging up on me.
I don’t know what to do.
That’s why I came here, to this sleepless corner of the internet.
If anyone knows what to do with this creature, if anyone has any shred of insight about how this could have happened — please reach out.