TAMPA, Fla. — What do you get when you cross a cat and a plane? A reunification story two years in the making.
Malachi is traveling 3,000 miles to Oak Harbor, Wash., to reunite with her owners after spending the last two years in Tampa.
Back in 2017 Jaclyn Williams and her husband moved to Portland, Ore., to help start a church. The downfall was having to leave their beloved cat behind since she could not come to their new "tiny" apartment.
That's when a woman from their church stepped in and agreed to take the cat, giving the couple a solution to their problem. Or so they thought.
On Monday, Dec. 9, an email popped into Williams' inbox from the company that manufactured the microchip she had implanted in Malachi telling her that the cat had turned up ownerless at a Tampa Bay area veterinary clinic before being given to the Hillsborough County Pet Resource Center.
The email asked if she wanted her cat back. The answer: A resounding yes now that the couple had a larger place to live.
Malachi is also now dealing with health conditions that Williams was worried would prevent the cat from being adopted.
It turns out, the woman who had their cat moved out of state earlier this year and no one is positive where the cat has been ever since.
Searching for a way to get her cat from Florida to Washington, Williams turned to Facebook to ask for help, pleading to her friends for ways to get Malachi back to her.
"What I'm looking for from you all is advice, tips, connections, etc. you may have for me to get him transferred here to us. I have emailed NUMEROUS transports, rescues, etc. but those all take time," she wrote.
That's when word reached a Southwest Airlines flight attendant named Joy McDonald who lives in Texas.
McDonald had an idea: Why not use the Southwest Airlines Animal Transport Team?
The team is a group of several hundred current and former employees of Southwest Airlines who help rescue dogs and cats from shelters and fly them to their owners wherever those owners are.
McDonald reached out to both groups and helped set up the reunion.
The Pet Resource Center, which adopts out thousands of cats a year but has never sent a pet so far away, welcomed the offer.
Within the next few days, Malachi will board a Southwest Airlines flight at Tampa International Airport and settle in for a trip that will cross three time zones.
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