LA: Coming up, how to nail that cat photo on your next vacation.

We’re back with some tips on how to incorporate cats into your own travels.

HS: If you’re traveling and let’s say you don’t have a lot of time to give, but you want to give something back to the cats of that community, an easy thing is just before you travel, look up what are the organizations in that community and reach out to them and say, “Is there something I can bring you?” Because there are parts of, I’m thinking of Tanzania now. For instance, in Zanzibar, there’s a wonderful community of people caring for kittens there, but there is no kitten formula there. You can’t get kitten formula, you can’t get bottles and things like that. So for instance, if you go to Zanzibar, you could reach out to them and say, “What can I bring you?” And maybe you throw some kitten bottles in your bag and you bring them to Zanzibar and get to meet some lovely people there that are doing that work and maybe volunteer.

LA: What an icebreaker and a way to connect with people in a new place by showing up with some kitten bottles and saying, “How can I help and can I meet the cats?”

HS: Sure.

LA: And in Swahili say, I can’t remember it, but, “Is there a cat here?”

HS: Yeah. As somebody who takes care of bottle babies, like neonatal orphaned kittens, there are certain types of nipple attachments for bottles that I really like and I will just throw 20 of them in my bag when I’m traveling and then give them to kitten people that I meet.

LA: Oh, my God, you’re like a Mary Poppins of cats.

HS: They’re so grateful and I’m just traveling with my bag of nipples.

LA: Yeah. Have you ever had to explain that at TSA? Get pulled over and be like-

HS: Actually, in fact, it was in Heathrow that my husband got stopped for a bag of unmarked catnip, which was really funny.

LA: Oh, my God.

HS: I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life. They were like, “What is this dried green substance?” And we were like-

LA: You’re cat people.

HS: You’re like, “You’ve got to believe us, it isn’t weed.” Pretty funny. Yeah, so I mean back to helping. Yes, I would say do your research ahead of time. If there’s somewhere that you’re going, reach out to the group, say, “Hey, can I volunteer with you? Can I bring you something? What would be helpful?” If you want to build a trip all around doing that work, I would say look into volunteering for spayathons. There are a lot of large spay neuter campaigns that will happen a couple times a year in designated areas. We volunteered for one in Vieques in Puerto Rico, and so we tell that story in the book, but that was a really cool way of getting to see Vieques and you’re not just going there to sun tan on the beach. You’re going there and you’re meeting community members and helping to, you can either help with trapping or maybe you can help with checking people in for the clinic.