Stray cats fly in Cessna to Saco animal shelter

LIMINGTON – A three-hour flight from Presque Isle in a light plane may prove to be the ticket to survival for 10 stray cats awaiting adoption.

In an unusual rescue mission arranged by a group of cat lovers, the felines were flown 268 miles Wednesday in a Cessna to the small airport in Limington.

Previously unwanted, the cats are considered more likely to find good homes in southern Maine where there are many more families likely to adopt them. The plane, which belongs to one of the rescuers, got them here without a long, stressful car ride.

The cats are now in the custody of Part of the Family Animal Sanctuary, a no-kill shelter in Saco that hopes to find them good homes before Christmas.

There are more stray cats in northern Maine than in the southern part of the state, said Dolores Vaillan-Cook, president of the Saco shelter, who grew up near Presque Isle.

So it’s often necessary to bring cats to southern Maine to find homes. But the drive can take seven hours, and cats don’t like being cooped up.

“It’s a long ride,” Vaillan-Cook said.

The rescue flight was the work of Jean and Warren Cobb of Standish. The plane is Jean’s and the group paid for the trip themselves.

It was the Cobbs’ first such flight, and it was unclear how many animals they would be able to take from a crowded Aroostook County shelter. The plane has a small cargo hold, and the two 17-inch-tall pet carriers barely fit behind the plane’s two seats.

“We had 11 passengers in a one-passenger plane,” Warren Cobb joked after the flight.

One container held an orange tabby and her three kittens, while the other carried six apparently unrelated kittens.

After the plane touched down in Limington, one of the women who helped coordinate the mission gazed admiringly at the orange tabby.