Stowaway Cat Back Home After a Long Trip to France

Emily the cat is back -- after flying home in the lap of luxury.

The curious cat who traveled to France in a cargo container touched down at the Milwaukee airport Thursday, greeted by her family and a group of reporters.

A Continental cargo agent handed Emily over to 9-year-old Nick Herndon, son of the cat’s owners, Donny and Lesley McElhiney.

“She’ll be held onto a lot all the way home,” Donny McElhiney said.

Her return in business class on a Continental Airlines flight was a sharp departure from her trip to France, where she was found thin and thirsty.

“She seems a little calmer than she was before, just a little quieter, a little, maybe, wiser,” said Lesley McElhiney, 32.

Emily vanished from her Appleton home in late September. She apparently wandered into a nearby paper company’s distribution center and crawled into a container of paper bales.

The container went by truck to Chicago and by ship to Belgium before the cat was found Oct. 24 at Raflatac, a laminating company in Nancy, France. Workers there used her tags to phone her veterinarian, who called the McElhineys.

On her flight home, Emily “opted for French cat food” and some water, airline spokeswoman Courtney Wilcox said.

Apparently, all that French food did Emily some good.

“She’s bigger and heavier than before,” Nick said.