Two summer tourists found a dying kitten one desperately-hot Emerald Beach afternoon. A moment of heartbreak, an act of charity, a lucky break — two flights and a long car ride later — and Emerald the cat is in a forever home in Oregon’s high desert.
If you threw a bullseye into Oregon, you’d come pretty near the town of Bend. It’s a long way for an eight-lives-left Caribbean beach cat.
In 2025, Pets With Wings helped fly 239 dogs and 236 cats to the mainland. Visitors or Virgin Islanders trekking back and forth brought a little puppy or kitty in a carrier under their seat or escorted them from a cargo area. At their destination airport, someone from a local shelter picked the animal up: a quick goodbye, and the soon-to-be-someone’s-best-friend was off.
“Each flight is $150 per pet,” said Annette T. Zachman, treasurer of the all-volunteer Pets With Wings. “That’s just for the flight. There are vaccines, health certificates, and other things that are needed for their safe transport.”
There’s no charge, of course, to escort a pet, nor does it pay. But the organization is always in need of support. An upcoming event in May hopes for generous five-figure donations but has options as low as $75, Zachman said.
“Every person has an opportunity to fly off with a pet,” she said. “Send us your information and we’ll do the footwork. We’ll meet you at the airport. We’ll do everything we can to help make this a smooth sailing.”
Back to that cat in Bend: “I get a call from the president of Pets With Wings. She got a call from some tourists that were down staying at Emerald Beach, down by the airport, freaking out, crying. They found this little super dehydrated — they thought it was dying — little black kitty. And I was like, oh God, it’s six o’clock, but OK. I go down there, meet them. She’s crying. It’s their 20th anniversary” Zachman said. “And I’m like, OK. So she hands me this little sick kitty through the car window. They go on about their way. But she says, let’s keep in touch because if anything, I love this cat.”
Zachman agrees to keep in touch, takes the cat home and nurses it back to health. A nonprofit, Pets With Wings is all volunteers. Zachman’s day job is as a hairdresser.
“So there’s a lady getting her haircut who’s talking about moving back to Oregon. She goes, well, we’re leaving next week, Tuesday. I said, well, would you be interested in, you know, transporting this little kitty? And she goes, ‘Sure. Why not?’”
The health certificate Zachman filled required a name for the cat found at Emerald Beach.
“And I’m like, I don’t know. Emerald. That beautiful green eyes. Jet black kitty. So his name is Emerald. Alright. Cool. She goes, ‘Well’ — and I told her the story about the couple — she goes, ‘Well, what’s the stone for the twenty year anniversary?’ And I look it up on my phone. It’s Emerald.”
Emerald flew to Portland and then, in a car with her new people, on a winding highway through the deciduous Willamette and Columbia confluence up into the coniferous Cascades, and on to the vast expanses of the high desert.
