Carri-Anne Jane had no clue how far she would go to come home with some very crucial additional luggage when she moved to Dubai for an internship in the fall of 2017.
Jane observed a little cat loitering outside the door to her apartment building in October, immediately after she moved in. She bent down to feed the cat, assuming the frequent visitor was searching for a meal, and received an unexpected response.
The white cat with brown markings rejected the food and preferred to interact with people.
“I sat down to try and show [the food] to him and he hopped up on my lap, snuggled into a ball and contently started purring,” Jane told The Dodo. “That was a definite, ‘Houston, we have a problem’ moment. No other street cats I’d encountered had ever done that.”
Jane and the cat immediately formed a bond and settled into a new routine — the little cat would run up to greet her with a friendly meow whenever Jane returned from work. Jane started calling the cat Eleven, a reference to the character from the Netflix show “Stranger Things,” but the name never seemed to fit the cat’s affectionate personality.
One day, Jane’s roommate pointed out that the little cat had a marking on his side that resembled a heart, and when he curled up to snuggle Jane, the heart became even more pronounced. Jane was shocked that the cat’s outside perfectly echoed his inside — and she quickly changed his name.
“He was so cuddly and affectionate, he has the biggest heart a kitten could have,” Jane said. “He became Brave (for how much he was willing to trust me) heart (his mark and love he has to give).”
By December, Jane had come to terms with the fact that she would have to bring Braveheart back to South Africa and had taken him to the veterinarian to confirm his good health. Despite being slightly underweight, Braveheart was given the all-clear to take to the skies.
I understood that I wouldn’t be able to leave this spirit behind and that I would be left thinking about that stray cat in Dubai for the rest of my life, Jane stated.
But Jane had no idea how tough it would be to get the ex-street cat to her house in Cape Town.
“My first quotation was R 44,000 [$3,095] from a South African firm,” Jane said. “I did slyly ask, ‘Is he traveling back in first class?’ in response to that. But that second solidified to me what he meant. I was horrified since leaving him behind would have meant spending R 44,000.
Jane began to research what it would take to export Braveheart from the United Arab Emirates to South Africa without a professional animal transport agency.
Though doing the legwork herself would shave down the price of Braveheart’s flight and export costs, Jane still needed to find a way to raise the money for all the fees, so she took to social media — starting an Instagram page and crowdfunding campaign for Braveheart.
Midway through January, with the deadline for Braveheart’s vaccinations fast approaching, Jane’s husband, Ray Leathern, sold his mountain bike to help reach their minimum target.
“We continued Braveheart’s campaign until February 28, 2018, at which point we had collected just under R 20,000,” Jane said. “He caught his flight home on March 1.” After 16 hours and a lot of hard work, Braveheart was finally home.
While Braveheart’s parents couldn’t be more excited to have him as a permanent resident, they are taking things slowly when it comes to introducing the cat to his new environment. It has taken a few months for Braveheart to adjust to his new life as a pampered pet and to his cat sibling, Jane explained.
“It’s been an adjustment for him from spending life on the streets for a few years then being brought inside, flown on [his] own for over half a day to arrive in a strange new place that has different flora and fauna and a resident cat,” Jane said.
“If we treated a human as such they’d be in the fetal position rocking in the corner, so we give him the time and respect to get to know his new home.”
After living in South Africa for seven months, Braveheart has finally begun to acclimatize, surprise his parents with his upbeat, jovial disposition.
When he sets his mind to anything, he is little obsessed, talks a lot, and is really energetic, according to Jane. He is drawn to heat sources of all kinds (he has no undercoat to deal with the heat in Dubai). He enjoys using a cunning side-paw movement to get food off your dish.
The small cat still wears his heart on his sleeve, or more precisely, his hair, despite all the changes.
The strain of assisting Braveheart in reaching South Africa was definitely worth it for Jane. “It was never about making our lives better. It was about enhancing his,” stated Jane. ”
Providing him with the greatest life we can. Creating an atmosphere where he may have his basic needs fulfilled and more, receive affection anytime he wants it, and feel secure enough to just be a happy cat.
