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American Jim Ranalli spent two years in Sri Lanka as an English Language Teahing Consultant at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies. When he returned to the US this month, Jim’s pet cat Pottu went too. But it turned out to be one incredible journey for this little feline as Jim Ranalli writes:

Pottu is one of two cats I adopted during my just-completed two-year stay in Sri Lanka. (Pottu is a Tamil word for the “third eye”, the ornament that Hindus wear on their foreheads to ward off evil.) Originally I’d hoped to bring both Pottu and her big brother Frank back with me to the US but unfortunately you’re only allowed one pet in the graduate student housing at Iowa State University where I’ll be living, so I left Frank in the care of my good friend Manjula and her family, who know and love him.

Pottu was scheduled to follow me about four days after I arrived in California. We were travelling separately because on the way home I stopped in Seoul for a week to visit friends.

Well, on her scheduled arrival day my friend Dina and I drove to Los Angeles International Airport (known locally as “LAX”). After a few hours of bureaucratic paper-shuffling and office-hopping, we finally had everything in order and were standing at the front desk of Lufthansa Cargo waiting to take possession. I was just about to ask why it was taking so long when one of the Lufthansa staffers came out and asked, “Who’s here for the cat?” “I am.”

“Well, we got a problem. Your cage is here but there’s no cat in it.”

I thought he was joking but he wasn’t. Poor Pottu had indeed arrived in LA and been offloaded from the plane but on the way from the arrival area to the Lufthansa Cargo warehouse she had somehow gotten out of her cage and scampered off. In other words, she was loose somewhere inside LAX.

This was bad. LAX is one of the largest and busiest airports in the world. There are a million places she could hide and a hundred ways she could get injured or killed. Plus she must have been scared out of her wits, since up to that point she’d led a very sheltered existence as an inside cat and had had no chance to develop any street smarts. Suddenly she was on her own in a huge and terrifying asphalt jungle with vehicles rumbling by and jumbo jets screaming overhead.

How had she gotten out? Well, the cat carrier’s metal-grill door had been secured with plastic cable ties by the shipping agent in Sri Lanka to make sure it didn’t open en route. But after the airport veterinarian in Frankfurt had taken her out for a routine examination during her layover in Germany, he apparently hadn’t resealed the door. When the carrier was loaded onto the luggage transport at LAX, the door’s plastic latches had been loosened, perhaps as the carrier was jostled around among the other baggage. The door had been knocked open wide enough for her to escape, and escape she had.

This immediately led to a frantic search on the part of Lufthansa staff and the airport authorities, since it’s potentially dangerous to have an animal walking around on the tarmac and runways. The Lufthansa Cargo director told me later that all airport ground traffic was stopped for three minutes to allow the airport police to do a sweep of the premises (Pottu will henceforth be known as "the cat who shut down LAX"). But unfortunately the search turned up nothing.

Meanwhile, Dina and I waited around for another couple of hours until it became clear that Pottu wasn’t going to be found that day. I left with the assurances of Lufthansa Cargo’s terminal manager, Rigo Cabrera, that he would do everything possible to find my cat.

That night I tossed and turned dreaming of cute, furry kittens being squashed by airport trucks or sucked into jet engines. I woke the next day feeling depressed and hopeless. But when I came downstairs, my mom had a good idea: why not take the story to the local TV news stations? Surely they’d eat this sort of thing up. So I dashed off an email including a summary of the events and a few pictures of Pottu to all the news channels and sure enough within an hour I was on the phone with a reporter from KCAL, the CBS affiliate, making arrangements for an interview at my parents’ house. The brief spot appeared on that evening’s 5 o’clock news.

I had two hopes for the news story: 1) that it might goad the airport authorities into intensifying their search; and 2) that it would inform people in the neighbourhoods surrounding LAX what to do in case they found a well-groomed, exotic-looking kitten wandering near their home or apartment.

But despite these hopes and the airing of the story, another two days passed with no sign of Pottu.

Fortunately, Rigo was good about keeping me in the loop and he seemed to be working hard to locate her, sending advisories to the other companies operating at the airport and even combing LA’s lost-pet websites looking for mention of my cat. One lead came in that sounded promising: there had been a report of a truck driver in the airport finding a cat and turning it over to the airport police. But when Rigo went to the police post to investigate, they had no idea what he was talking about. The log book showed no reports of anyone turning in a cat.

So he went to the company where the driver worked and talked with him and his supervisor. The driver claimed he’d given the cat to a “Hispanic-looking” police officer but could provide no further details. Rigo thought the story sounded suspicious. When the driver failed to respond to his other enquiries, Rigo made it clear that soon it would be the Los Angeles Police Department, not Lufthansa, who’d be asking the questions next time.

Friday rolled around. Pottu had now been missing for four days. I was more dejected than ever. That day I drove back up to LA to meet my aunt for lunch. Just after we’d finished eating and were getting into the car, I got a call from the KCAL news desk. Someone had called to say they had my cat.

It turns out that the day after Rigo had threatened the truck driver, Pottu miraculously appeared in front of the Hilton Hotel on busy Century Boulevard on the outskirts of the airport. An off-duty TSA agent (one of those folks who frisk you and x-ray your luggage) said she came upon a group of people fussing over a lost and hungry-looking kitten. The woman, whose name is Roberta, happened to be a cat person and she was worried that Pottu might wander into the street if left on her own. So she scooped her up in a box and took her home. Later that day Roberta was talking to a co-worker about the incident. By chance the co-worker had seen Tuesday’s news broadcast and together they quickly surmised that this might be the celebrity missing cat.

They confirmed it by viewing the pictures of Pottu posted on KCAL’s website and then called the news desk. The news desk then called me and put us in touch with each other. I picked up Pottu from Roberta’s house an hour later.

Needless to say I’m relieved and happy to have my cat back. For her part, Pottu seemed out of sorts at first – she gave me a good chewing out on the drive home – but she’s bounced back quickly and is up to her old antics. I just wonder how many of her nine lives were used up in this misadventure.

Before I finish, let me acknowledge the heroes of this story: first of all, my lovely mother for giving me the idea to go to the TV news; secondly, Rigo Cabrera for going above and beyond the call of duty in trying to reunite me and my cat; thirdly, the good folks of KCAL News for their interest and follow-through; and finally, Roberta and her co-worker Carrie for being cat-lovers and good Samaritans. Pottu and I owe them all a big debt of thanks.

Some have asked what’s next for Pottu and me. Well, amid preparations for our move to Iowa early next month we’re trying to market our story to Cat Fancy magazine. We’re also thinking of writing a children’s book and hoping some enterprising executive at Pixar or Dreamworks will want to option the story for an animated feature. (This is LA, after all.) In which case, our next update won’t be from Iowa but Hollywood. Watch this space.