With a Cat Around the World

Everyone probably dreams of going on a trip around the world. But cat lovers - and we are the cat lovers! - have one serious problem: who will take care of the pet during such a long absence? The example of Scotsman Dean Nicholson shows that you can travel with a cat!

Two years ago, this guy lived quietly in his hometown of Dunbar, which is located fifty kilometers away from Edinburgh, on the North Sea coast. He worked as a welder, and, in general, everything was fine with Dean. But one fine day he thought: “Life has become boring,” took a bicycle and set off on a trip around the world. Well, it always happens this way: someone dreams, and someone does. Dean's first destination was Amsterdam, then Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia - so the guy got to the border of Bosnia and Montenegro, where a fateful meeting awaited him.

“It was a normal day,” Nicholson said - I was on my way to Montenegro, climbing a high hill on a bicycle. And then I heard a quiet "meow" somewhere behind me. She was running after me up the hill. Then I stopped, and she could not make a step away from me. I put her in a bag on a frame so that she was comfortable, and decided to take her to the nearest city to check if she had a microchip. But there was no chip, and she climbed onto my shoulder and fell asleep. And that's all, I realized that she would travel with me further."

You get it, right? The most important meetings in our life often happen by chance, but they are the ones that turn our life for 180 degrees. Dean had planned to go fast and get to Thailand as soon as possible, but now he was not alone! Nala, as the traveler named the cat, changed both the pace of the journey and the route: the cat and her new man got caught by the rain, and Nala got ill. Dean was very scared that he would lose his friend, stopped for a few days at a hotel and returned to the route only when the cat recovered.

“She taught me to take my time and enjoy the moment,” Dean says. “When she's on the bicycle with me, her needs come first, so the journey has slowed down a lot. We often stop and play. If there is a forest on the way, we play there. She also loves to run on the beach."

They have already covered about 16 thousand kilometers together. They have visited Switzerland, Austria, France, Denmark, Albania, Greece, Slovenia... In a word, read and envy, all those who dream of traveling! And by the way, everything is legal: Nala even has her own passport.

In Georgia, she rode a funicular...

... was kayaking somewhere...

... watched the flight of balloons in Turkey...

... and in Bulgaria she saw snow for the first time in her life!

Dean and Nala talk about their travels on Instagram, where there are already more than 800 thousand subscribers, as well as on their own website. Earnings from watching videos go to buy cat food and repair the bicycle. And a book has already been written about them. No wonder, there are not so many cats on our planet who travel around the world.

The brave friends are planning to spend the winter in Greece, where they will work in shelters for homeless animals. And then, when spring comes, they will still go to Thailand. Through Russia - so we have a chance to meet them on one of our roads one day. Remember them in person :)