Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
...I'm reminded of some years ago when I had a friend who was a sea captain (Master) of a large oil tanker. Carl had a cat that he kept on his ship for company, and the quarantine gestapo caught wind of it. They actually demanded to board the ship and impound the cat, in defiance of international maritime law.
Carl stationed an armed guard at the gangway and dared them to try it.
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I recall a couple of land based cats getting on board ships in port here and then being discovered after the ship had sailed. The last I remember was some years back now and the next port was Korea (if I recall correctly) - the cat got a free air flight back to NZ. I can't remember who sponsored the cat's flight back, either the shipping company or the airline.
Just a small aside point, international maritime law does not prevent the removal of a cat, for example, from a foreign flagged ship in another country's ports if the local law on the matter is not met. Foreign vessels have to obey the legislation of the county's territorial waters they are in apart from the ship's flag state matters (manning, survey, etc.) but even for those the country whose waters the vessel is in can intervene on matters of safety of the ships operations if considered inadequate.
In NZ cats and dogs can stay on visiting commercial vessels but they have to be inspected and securely caged while the vessel is docked {EDIT: It occurs to me that perhaps the armed guard at the gangway in Woden's post provided, in bio-security inspectors' eyes, sufficient security that the cat would not get ashore alive
}. If the animal is not secured it will be removed. Some pleasure yachts arrive with cats on board and they have either to put the cat into the usual quarantine requirements or if to be kept on board the yacht is not a allowed to dock but must stay at anchor, on a mooring, etc. I've often wondered about this because cats are excellent swimmers and I know of cats on yachts that are happy to take a swim.