A travel influencer’s trip from Seattle to Salt Lake City almost descended into a cat flight after a not-so-pawsitive Delta Airlines crew member allegedly told her to shut her feline up, or get shown the door.
Janelle Rupkalvis, her partner and their four-year-old, part-Siamese pet cat, Asparagus, had barely sat down in their first-class seats on Feb. 19 when the flight attendant made the hair-raising threat, Rupkalvis recalled in a TikTok video posted the next day.
“I think [the attendant is] gonna remind us that, ‘Oh, you have a cat, they have to stay in the carrier the whole time’…But no. Instead she goes, ‘If your cat doesn’t stop meowing, we’re gonna have to ask you to get off the plane,” Rupkalvis, 30, said in the clip.
“I was like, ‘What?’ Like, one, he’s a cat. Two, he’s not screaming. He’s meowing because there’s a lot of commotion…This is a scary thing for a little guy who’s sitting in a little carrier underneath the seat,” Rupkalvis continued in the nearly-three-minute-long TikTok video that’s been seen 11,000 times.
Despite feeling “panicked” by the warning, Rupkalvis said she had flown with Asparagus – or Gus for short – on Delta flights before, and knew the crewmember’s threat couldn’t be fur real.
“So I text Delta and I ask them to clarify what the actual policy is, so I’m prepared” in case the flight attendant’s claws came out, she explained in the clip.
In response, a Delta representative said that owners are responsible for keeping their pets “passive” during the flight, according to Rupkalvis.
“The requirement is for the pet to be passive, not silent. Like, that is a huge distinction,” she said.
Rupkalvis said she was “happy” to be informed – but still felt like there was more Delta could do for her.
So before signing off with the customer service agent, “I asked if there was any compensation that we could get because of the incorrect information that we were told on the plane, and how that caused a really anxiety- and stressed-induced situation,” she explained.
Rupkalvis and her partner were offered 30,000 Delta miles combined – and left the situation feline fine.
“While the initial experience was frustrating, I really appreciated that level of customer service and the effort to acknowledge and address the situation,” Rupkalvis told The Post.
