Naia, the cat lost like a suitcase at the Tenerife airport: "They told us that they didn't know where she was and that we should get off the plane"

Guillermo del Palacio Madrid

Madrid

Updated Thursday, April 4, 2024-02:12

Last Sunday, March 31, in the midst of returning from Easter,

Rocío Bienert

and her brother

Álvaro

were returning to Madrid from the Tenerife airport. They also did it with the two cats of Álvaro, a doctor, who a few months ago had found a place in a hospital in the capital and took the opportunity to move with his pets after several years on the island. It was the last time she saw Naia, the cat she had adopted five years before and had taken, precisely, to Tenerife.

"My brother went there to live and took the kitten," Rocío, who shared her story on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon, explains to EL MUNDO. "Once we got our tickets, he had called Iberia several times and they did not give him an answer:

they simply told him to go to the counter

and that this depended on the number of animals that were already on the flight," the story continues. Finally, after four calls they decided to go the same day with both cats, Naia and Gofio, whom he had already adopted in Tenerife.

At the airport they didn't have any problems, they weighed the animals in the carrier and charged them "

145 euros for each cat

." Once done, they were accompanied to a passage area - "like entry control, but for animals" - and "several operators" prepared everything. At this moment, Rocío is surprised, they opened and closed the transporters several times and

they did not detect any errors

. Furthermore, Bienert reports that they had not encountered any problems taking the cats in the car to the airport either. It was the last time they saw Naia.

Once on the plane, "a very young and very nervous boy appeared saying that the carrier

did not meet the requirements nor was it approved to carry animals

." This surprised them because they had already tagged it and, in principle, had allowed it to fly. "They said we had to go out to keep the cat because he couldn't fly with that carrier; he could open the door and go out into the warehouse and die."

At that moment they proposed to the captain to take both animals in the same carrier, fly with the animal in the cabin or have a relative who lives in Tenerife come to pick up the cat and delay their move. "That's when they tell us that the cat is not there,

that he has escaped and that he is in 'the yard

,'" recalls Bienert.

"One of his superiors appeared, [and told us] that he has escaped and doesn't know where he is and that one of us has to get off the plane," he recalls. Since the other animal could continue the journey and since her brother had to work the next day, Rocío got off, and shortly after she would discover that the situation was going to get even more complicated.

"They told us that he was cornered, that there was only one way out, but that if he went out that way his companions would see him," he explains. She was "anxious" to get to that patio because she believed that upon hearing her voice the cat would appear. "When the operator accompanies me, he puts me in a car, takes me through an area with suitcase ramps and

takes me out to the runway where all the planes are

." That was the patio: the take-off and landing strip. "In fact, one of the operators told me that it is so dangerous that if he crossed the runway and they saw him from the control tower they would have to stop all flights," Rocío continues.

After several hours wandering around - "due to the noise of the plane's engines it was impossible to access areas where she could be hidden," she claims - Rocío decided to also return to Madrid, but first she asked to take a photo of the carrier. When she arrived back at the suitcase area she found the other cat, Gofio, who was "curled up in the bed, he had peed." "Because I went to ask,

if not, I arrive in Madrid and we don't have the other cat either

," she complains. "We do not understand anything". Gofio returned to her in the cabin.

"Regardless of whether it is my cat, the pain it produces and what it may be suffering, it is dangerous for that to happen," laments the affected person. "We went through animal control with three operators looking at the container, opening and closing it, and no one told us anything," she insists. "You cannot be on a plane and have them lie to you and tell you that the carrier is not approved and then tell you that the cat has escaped; it seems very serious to me." The animal, she insists, "

is a living being, first, and then, there is the emotional bond it has with a person

." "It's part of the family."

Now, three days later, they are in contact with the operators, who also have their relative's phone number and claim "that they have seen him several times." On one occasion they sent him a photo of a cat, but it wasn't Naia. Beyond these communications, they have had no news from the company, despite the fact that his brother filed a complaint as soon as he arrived in Madrid: "No one has contacted us." After publishing his story on the networks, he did receive a message from the company in which they asked for the information of his brother, who was the one who paid for the animals, and, through an animal association, they are also trying to get him Aena provides them with recordings from the airport to understand what happened.

"We don't have much hope," Bienert acknowledges, although they remain attentive "waiting for the miracle," he says with surprising calm. When he told his friends "they told me that if it happened to them the airport would burn." "

I don't want it to burn, I want my cat back

."