UK Couple Recalls Ordeal After Airline Loses Their Kittens, How They Reunited

A newlywed British couple had the most troubling few hours of their lives after they came to know that three kittens they rescued in Crete, Greece, had gone missing during their air travel.

In September 2023, 34-year-old veterinary nurse Bethany Mulcahy-Stephenson and her husband, Adam, 39, found a stray cat with a "very distinctive bulging eye that needed to be removed." The cat was affectionately called Abba. Months later, when they returned to Crete for their wedding, they looked for Abba and found that she had given birth to a litter of four kittens, The Guardian reported.

The couple rescued the kittens because one of them was blind and the other two had eye infections. The Lancashire couple named them Frida, Agnetha, Bjorn, and Benny.

They decided to transport them from Crete to Paris after having received veterinary care and immunisations, and hired a local rescuer to look after them temporarily. They intended to use Calais to drive back to their house in Lancashire, Barrowford.

During the trip to retrieve the kittens, the couple was thrown into a state of panic and bewilderment when they received a text from their Greek rescuer at the Eurotunnel shuttle terminal: "The airline has lost three of the kittens."

Three cats were put in the hold of an Aegean Airlines flight, while only two were permitted in the cabin.

"It was absolute panic. I immediately went into complete shock and panic," Mulcahy-Stephenson said.

"We didn't know where they were, whether they were in France, Greece, or had been abandoned on the tarmac," she added.

The kittens, accidentally left in the hold, returned to Thessaloniki without being removed in Paris. "I thought they were going to be dead, never found again," Mulcahy-Stephenson said, describing her fear for their well-being in the crowded, cold aeroplane hold without food or water.

Eventually, Aegean Airlines flew the cats back via Athens, this time in-cabin with a dedicated handler. "I was counting them all ten times by shining the torch inside." When the couple finally saw them, Mulcahy-Stephenson recounted, "I was so relieved to see them and have them in the car, safe."

Despite their happiness upon being reunited with the kittens, the couple was extremely upset by the airline's lack of apology and explanation. Adam Mulcahy-Stephenson stated that they "would love to force some kind of reform ... to not have animals in the hold."

In response, Aegean Airlines stated that the kittens were "never lost at any time" and blamed the incident on operational delays upon their arrival in Paris. The aircraft crew reportedly offered the kittens food, water, and supervision, and that same evening, the kittens were reunited with their human carers in Paris.