A newlywed couple who married in Greece have said they feared the worst when three kittens they rescued from Crete went missing after being left in the hold of an aeroplane.
They first travelled to the island in September 2023 and found the mother cat, who “had a very distinctive bulging eye that needed to be removed”, Bethany Mulcahy-Stephenson, a veterinary nurse, said.
When they returned to Crete for their wedding in May, they went to look for the cat, whom they had named Abba, and found her with four kittens and pregnant again. Two of the kittens had eye infections and one was blind. The couple later named them Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Frida.
Mulcahy-Stephenson, 34, and her husband, Adam, 39, contacted a local rescuer who said she could take the kittens in temporarily, but they would have to find homes for them.
“It was a life or death decision,” said Mulcahy-Stephenson. “No doubt at least the blind one and probably one of the other ones would be dead by now. So we were a bit like, OK, well, it’s a no-brainer.”
After having the cats treated by a vet and vaccinated, they arranged for them to be flown to Paris, where they would then drive down from their home in Barrowford in Lancashire to collect them from Calais.
The cats were flown with Aegean airlines; only two cats were allowed in the cabin and three of the kittens were placed in a crate in the hold.
Mulcahy-Stephenson said: “When we arrived at the Eurotunnel shuttle terminal, we got a text from Lida, our rescuer in Greece, saying: ‘Bethany, the airline has lost three of the kittens,’ and it was absolute panic.
“I immediately went into complete shock panic, just absolute bedlam,” she said. “We didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t even know where they were, if they [had] left Greece, if they were in France or if they had been left on the tarmac.”
Eventually, they were told the kittens had been located, having been flown from Thessaloniki to Paris, but had not been unloaded in France.
Mulcahy-Stephenson said: “They were somehow forgotten in the hold, or not seen. They didn’t come off the plane at all, and the plane got sent straight back to Thessaloniki, which is another three-hour flight.”
When the kittens did not arrive in France, the couple immediately feared the worst. “I thought they were going to be dead, never found again, to be honest,” said Mulcahy-Stephenson. “I thought even if they weren’t lost, the shock of being in the noisy hold, [where] it’s cold, they’ve had no food, water … There was a lot of stuff going through my mind, but I didn’t think we were going to see them again.”
After initially telling the couple, via their rescuer who spoke Greek and acted as a go-between, it was a two-day wait for another plane back to Paris, the airline agreed to send the cats back via Athens, in the cabin, with a dedicated handler.
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When Mulcahy-Stephenson was finally reunited with the kittens, she said: “I was shining the torch in there to count them all 10 times. I was so relieved to see them and have them in the car, safe.”
She added: “When they arrived, they were absolutely traumatised, they wouldn’t eat, we had them in the emergency vet.”
The couple said they had still not had a proper explanation as to why the cats had been left behind in the hold, or an apology from Aegean.
Adam Mulcahy-Stephenson said: “We’d like the airline to acknowledge what the problem is here, and in an ideal world we’d love to force some kind of change … to not have animals in the hold.”
Aegean airlines said: “With regard to the three kittens you mentioned, we would like to clarify that they were never lost at any time. Upon the arrival of the flight in Paris, they were not immediately disembarked due to operational reasons. As soon as this was identified, a coordinated response was promptly activated among all involved stations and our customer service department, in order to safeguard their care and security until their reunion with their guardians.
“The kittens continued their journey the same day under the direct care of the Aegean crew, which provided them with food and water during the flight, ensuring constant supervision. The same evening, they were safely reunited with their guardians in Paris.”
