If you’ve ever packed a car for a long road trip with pets running around, you may have had a momentary worry that they would get packed up with everything else.
A family of five from St. Albans, Maine, discovered their fear was true! Andrea Scholten and her family loaded up their pop-up van in July 2022 and drove 900 miles to Wisconsin for the 2022 EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. Because of all the chaos, they didn’t notice that Delilah, the family cat, had snuck into the camper with them.
Andrea Scholten, her family, and Delilah the cat were in the car.
They drove to Toledo, Ohio, before stopping for the night. When they opened the tent, they saw that they had a passenger with them.
“I open the door, and there’s Delilah,” Andrea remembered. “I just yelled “Delilah!” and both my husband and my kids said “Delilah!” So, we went to Target and got her food, litter, and a collar on which we could write her name because we weren’t ready.
Andrea was already going to post about their trip to the air show on Facebook, so she added a post with the word #stowawayoshkoshcat to the event’s Facebook page. Before they even got to Oshkosh, Delilah had become a local star because of the post.
“We posted a story about her with a picture of her, and everyone thought it was hilarious,” the cat’s mum said. “They said, ‘We want more Delilah,’ so we gave them more. I put up a post every day a couple of times a day, and we used the #. Delilah was very popular.
During an air show, a cat got smoke from an airplane.
The event planners even made a skywriting picture for their surprising guests that looked slightly like something they had seen before. They chose to have her back next year because she was so popular. This time, you’re in!
The family stopped by Niagara Falls on returning to Maine after the air show. Delilah seemed to enjoy every part of her trip, and her family liked having her with them, too.
The Scholten family went to Niagara Falls with Delilah.
Hey, cats sometimes need a change of scenery, too! Maybe cat owners will be inspired by this story to take their cats with them on their next car trip. But then… maybe not!
Tell this story to anyone who brought something or someone they didn’t expect.
