Americans are renowned for loving their pets like kin, and American military families are no different. But what to do with Pudgy the parakeet and fresh orders to Japan?

Take Pudgy with you, of course. 

When military families move, their pets move with them. These seasoned travelers crisscross oceans, tolerate months of quarantine in foreign countries and car trips across country. They pack on more miles than some humans in their lifetimes.

Take Zoomer the hamster for instance. Zoomer’s mother, Army wife Mindy Fortier, notes according to the hamster books, the lifespan for a hamster is approximately two years. Three PCS (Permanent Change of Station) moves and five and half years later, Zoomer’s final resting place is near the Fortiers’ backyard pool in Tampa, Fla.

“Thank God!” Mindy said. “Try driving across country — California to Virginia — with the maze of plastic tubes. And the smell. Not a pretty sight.”
Mindy has also moved with guinea pigs, cats, dogs, fish and hermit crabs.

“Just wait until you have kids,” she said. The hardest pet Mindy ever moved was her daughter’s $2.99 goldfish, Goldie. Throughout the twelve-hour drive from Redstone Arsenal, Ala., to MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., family members took turns holding Goldie as he swished around in his temporary Tupperware home.

Then there are those times when military pets go on strike. Consider Fireball the cat. “Fireball really didn’t think moving was all that great of an idea and protested by spraying the inside of the van,” said Army wife Lynda Strock. “Let me tell you, no matter how many times you clean the upholstery inside your vehicle, when it sits in the Arizona sun with the windows up, even for a little while, the smell comes back — again and again.” 

Mindy, the hamster-guinea pig-dog-fish transporter, also had a cat that went on strike. The Fortiers spent hours coaxing their cat, Georgia, out of the box spring she had jumped into during a night’s stay at an inter-state hotel in northern Florida.
“Sometimes I do feel like Noah,” Mindy conceded, “but we would not have traded a rough move because of pets, for a smooth one and a life without them.”

Moving overseas with pets can be especially trying. The McManners could hear their beloved English sheepdog Abbey, crated in the cargo area of the plane, howl the whole way from Alabama to Germany.  At the BLQ (Bachelor Living Quarters), 90-pound Abbey couldn’t climb the steep steps, so Shannon McManners-Hursts’ dad carried his baby up the stairs. During a move to England, the McManners visited Abbey every day during the required six-month quarantine.  

“Abbey is buried in the backyard of our house in England,” said Shannon, now an Army wife herself. “Along with a little piece of my mom’s heart, which will probably never be the same without that dog.”

Now about that little parakeet named Pudgy. Yes, many years ago when Army wife Linda Ely was just a girl, her Army family received orders to Japan. Her blue parakeet Pudgy (with papers proving he was an American citizen), flew first class from Chicago to Tokyo and arrived three days before Linda’s mother, who had to wait for a MAC (Military Assistance Command) flight.

During Pudgy’s tour in Japan, he learned some Japanese and enjoyed calling himself “Pudgy-san.” After the tour, Pudgy again crossed the ocean and returned to America. But when the Elys arrived at the airport in Washington, DC, Pudgy wasn’t on his flight. It turns out the jet-setting Pudgy had missed his connecting flight in L.A. Seven hours and a second trip to the airport later, Pudgy-san and the Elys reunited. 

And then there is the tale of Butterscotch, the “teenaged cat” as her owner, Army wife, Liza Kalamaha-Wynn, called her. “She was a typical teen monster,” Liza explained. “Staying out all night and always looking for trouble.”

When the family got ready to move from Augusta, Ga., to Fort Hood, Texas, Butterscotch was nowhere in sight. The family left pictures and messages with neighbors and offers to fly her to Texas. Not long after arriving at Fort Hood, Liza got a call from an excited neighbor back in Georgia. She had Butterscotch in a cage on her porch. After a trip to the vet and a $200 plane ticket to Texas, Butterscotch was on her way. Liza and her four kids waited anxiously for the pet they had been separated from for two months.

Just one problem — the cat who stepped out of the kennel was butterscotch in color — but wasn’t Butterscotch. It was a male cat to boot.  

After many phone calls, it was determined that the male cat and his family had just moved into their old neighborhood in Georgia when he escaped from the yard only to be caught up in an adventure which ended in his adoption by a new military family.

“The previous owners were fine with leaving him with us — probably because he required a special and very expensive kidney diet,” Liza said. The old owners asked only that the Wynns send pictures of him with his new family.

“We sent the pictures and enjoyed the next couple of years with a very sweet and loving cat, newly named Butterscotch.”