Bringing a cat into Taiwan part 2

In the first post about my cat, I covered the process on the Canadian side up to the point of sending my cat to Taipei. In this post I will cover everything that occured on the Taiwanese side once my cat arrived.

My cat arrived into Taipei at 4:55 am on Friday, as mentioned in part 1. As also previously mentioned, I hired Jet Fast Pet in Taipei to take care of clearing my cat from customs and picking her up from quarantine. I did this, as first it took me a couple of days to get confirmation that my cat will arrive to the cargo building and not the terminal. After I received this confirmation, I could not get the BAPHIQ office to confirm with the quarantine facility NCHU in Taichung that I will be able to pick up my cat at the end of seven days in quarantine. NCHU told me that they would need to receive a clearance certificate from BAPHIQ prior to releasing the cat to me, and that I was not likely to receive this until day 8, whereas BAPHIQ insisted that I needed to pick up the cat at the end of the 7 days to avoid additional charges, and no mention of a clearance certificate. I tried my best for the two of them to confirm the details together, and included both on emails, but each one would respond to me omitting the other from the replies. Forwarding one's reply to the other also did not get me far at all.

As my cat arrived at 4:55 am and there is no access to the cargo building before 7:30 am, I started my journey by taking the first MRT train from Banqiao at 6 am to Taipei Main station, and from there took the MRT to TPE terminal 1. Once at terminal 1, I went to the departures level, and outside there is a shuttle that goes to the various buildings including the Evergreen terminal. I asked the shuttle bus driver to let me off at the Evergreen cargo building. As he did not speak English I showed him a picture and this worked great.

Once at the Evergreen building I met with Jack Wei of Jet Fast Pet, as I hired him last minute and needed to sign an agreement with him and provide him with all of the original documents (titer test, rabies vaccine certificate, chip). The entrance for customs is on the far right of the building, and need to take the elevator to the second floor.

This is the full building. The shuttle bus will drop you off on the opposite side of the street just before this building

On the second floor is where the first set of documents got signed. Everything was in Chinese, and so I just signed where they told me to. After the first set of documents got signed I was allowed to go see my cat. It was back down the first floor, where I had to leave my gold card visa with the security guard, sign in, and put on a visitor vest with a tag on it to enter the cargo area. The guard also provided hand sanitizer and used a metal detector. At this point, they let me open the carrier and play with my cat while Jack completed the rest of the paperwork.

The picture from cargo speaks for itself I believe. The area is quite dirty, and extremely noisy. My cat was extremely stressed. It took Jack just over two hours to complete all of the paperwork, and during this time my cat got three visits:

• Visit #1 - they checked the manifest documents to the carrier
• Visit #2 - they checked the microchip number, and had me take the cat out to confirm her gender
• Visit #3 - double check the numbers on the carrier.

Visit #3 took place once all of the documents were complete, got ready to take me back to the terminal and locked up the cage. After I had left the cat was sent to the quarantine facility.

Once my cat was sent to quarantine, I followed up with NCHU every day and they would send me pictures and videos of her and how she was doing. It was great to get the daily updates.

On the morning of the following Friday in the morning NCHU sent me the clearance certificate and pet license that was issued by BAPHIQ. Not on day 8, and not at the end of the quarantine time, but well in advance as I got it at 8:30 am. Had I known that this is how it happens, if only those two places spoke to each other and confirmed, I wouldn't have needed to hire anyone on the Taiwan side and could have saved $33,000 NTD ($1,500 CDN). Would have also provided me with a trip to Taichung which I was looking forward to.

This is the pet license I was sent

Lessons learned:

• The top lesson is that no one in Taiwan wants to provide a full answer as they do not want to be held accountable should anything go wrong
• Zero trust here with anything. They will check the pet as many times as they want to ensure no one is swapping the pet out, or changed something. Same as paperwork. I had sent all of the paperwork to BAPHIQ in advance, and they confirmed there was nothing missing and that it was all in order, but they undertake a full process of the originals as if they never saw them before. In Canada as mentioned in part 1, everything can be done using scans and photocopies
• They will treat your pet as if it is rabies infected despite the vaccine and titer test
• Hindsight 20/20 there is no reason as to why a person cannot clear their own pets through customs and pick them up. Just need to believe the pet will arrive at cargo, and be ready to spend 2-3 hours there clearing paperwork of which there was a mountain, and then follow up on the morning of day 7 with BAPHIQ for the clearance certificate and pet license

For anyone looking to hire someone to complete the process for them as I did, I would highly recommend using Jack of Jet Fast Pet. He was truly awesome, speaks English, and everything was on schedule as planned. For me, Jack created a lot of peace of mind, and eliminated all the stress I experienced up to hiring him. He picked up the cat from quarantine, and delivered her to me.

For pictures from their service related to my cat, click here for the customs process, and here for the quarantine pick up.