Don’t Send Pets Through X-Ray Unit, TSA Warns

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is offering travelers some rather obvious advice: Don’t put your pet through the airport X-ray machine.

Apparently, it really happened at Norfolk International Airport in Virginia. Lisa Farbstein, spokesperson for TSA, tweeted the warning on March 3, along with an X-ray image of a cat.

“Just when you thought it was safe to bring your pet cat on a trip …,” she wrote. “A traveler left their pet cat in its travel carrying case at a
@TSA checkpoint this morning at @NorfolkAirport.”

She called the incident a “cat-astrophic mistake!”

“Attention pet owners: Please do not send your pet through the X-ray unit,” she cautioned.

In comments on Twitter, Farbstein confirmed that the cat was OK.

“The traveler and cat had to go through screening the proper way once the TSA officers saw the X-ray image,” she wrote. “The proper way being to remove the cat from the travel bag.”