Cost of Bringing a Cat to Australia

The ugly numbers are below.  If you bring the cat in by boat you have 2 choices:

(a) keep the boat at anchor or on a mooring always while in Australia. Boat is never allowed to go to a marina. Quarantine officers will regularly check out the boat to see if kitty is aboard AND boat is locked up with hatches closed if you are not aboard.. They don't say how regularly, but maybe 1 visit / week or so.  At $180/hr, it wouldn't take long for costs to mount up... And it might be nice to visit a marina or haulout sometime.

(b) put cat in quarantine upon arrival. Only East Coast quarantine station is in Sydney so you might have to make arrangements to get the cat there at hideous extra cost. If you visit some Pacific Islands (I think Cook I and Samoa are on the 'bad' country list,) quarantine time increases to 60 days.  If you are like us and left from Mexico, you have to have the cat rabies vaxed and tested in the US, a not inconsiderable hassle. They won't accept Mexican rabies test results.  Heck they wouldn't accept Canadian rabies test results. The blood went to a US lab.

So we opted to send Cat back to Canada to live with my parents for 11 months, and did paperwork and testing from there, and flew him to Sydney where he was in solitary for 30 days. I flew from Brisbane to Sydney at an unspeakable hour to get him.  Hope you like your cat Maia and Diane!

Fly cat PV to Vancouver	100
Vet Fees, Canada, govt vet	379
Vet Fees, Canada, private vet	339
Air Canada Cargo, Vancouver to Sydney	400
AQIS
Lodgement Fee	85
Assement Fee	240
Quarantine Entry	15
Document Clearance	40
Vet Exam	80
Kennel	870
	2448
Optional Extras
Taxis, to/from Brisbane airport	100
Flight to/from Sydney	213
Cat cargo fee, Sydney to Brisbane	55
Rental car, fuel, meals	100
Grande Total	2916

Moving aboard sounds pretty straight forward. Get rid of all the excess stuff and go. Last time we did it, it really was that easy. This time round I'm not sure if it is because of Maia, the fact that I'm older and less flexible or because we have better stuff - but this time it is so much harder deciding what should go aboard and what should just go away. Normally, when you move from one home to the next, most of your stuff goes with you. Even when you downsize you get to keep your favourite books. But on a light boat, with a waterline that sinks 1/2" for every 350lbs that finds its way aboard, we need to say goodbye to a lot of stuff we like.

And with time ticking we're having a Craig's List fire sale. The only stuff we're storing is some art work, a few baby things of Maia's and charts for the second half of the world.

The rest of it is going.

Well, not the cat.