A Stowaway Cat Is Famous After Deciding To Join Her Family’s Summer Vacation
The feline friend snuck into the family's camper trailer and traveled from Maine to Wisconsin and back again.
Pet parents know how hard it can be to leave furry friends behind when going on vacation. Even when it’s been arranged for every one of their needs to be met and then some — there’s still a sense of sadness when you’re separated from a pet for an extended period of time. It can be hard on pets, too, when they don’t quite understand what’s going on or if their owners are coming back.
One cat in St. Albans, Maine, wasn’t leaving anything up to chance.
Andrea Scholten and her family were planning to drive from Maine to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to see an airshow without their pets, including their house cat Delilah. However, Delilah had other plans. Before her family headed off, she snuck into their pop-up camper trailer as a stowaway. It was only after the family had driven a little less than 1,000 miles that they realized Delilah had come along for the vacation.
“I open the door and there’s Delilah,” Scholten told WCSH-TV in Portland. “I just screamed ‘Delilah!’ and my husband and the kids were like, ‘Delilah!’”
Now that the family had discovered that their sneaky feline friend had tagged along, they needed to stock up on essentials for her. “ ... we went to Target, we bought her food, litter, a collar that we could write her name on because we were completely unprepared for this,” Scholten explained.
The family was hesitant at first about Delilah’s sneaky plan, wondering how the cat would fair on a road trip. “The plan so far is to see how she does as a camper cat, if she doesn’t do well ... we’ll have to find a kennel,” Scholten wrote in an initial Facebook post about Delilah.
After finding out that Delilah was definitely road trip material, the family chronicled their journey to Oshkosh with their stowaway cat through Facebook posts. When a thunderstorm rolled through overnight while camping, Delilah took it like a champ. Scholten updated her Facebook page: “2:30 am ... pretty good thunderstorm ... Camper cat remains [unphased]. Good girl Delilah!” alongside a photo of the orange cat sound asleep.
Soon, everyone at the airshow was enamored with Delilah, too. Word spread quickly about the stowaway and even their pilots and airshow ended up showing their love for the sneaky feline by drawing the cat in the air.
The family finally made it to Oshkosh with Delilah in tow and enjoyed the airshow together.
They even made a pit stop to Niagara Falls on the way back home since Delilah was such a lovely addition to the family trip.
What started as a mistake is going to end up a tradition.
On closing out the trip, Andrea wrote, “She’s coming to Oshkosh again. We had so many people commenting, bring her to Oshkosh 23 so she’s coming with us next time for sure.”
