Only one cruise ship in the world lets you bring your dog or cat along on a transatlantic crossing: Cunard's Queen Mary 2, which has shuttled between Southampton and New York since 2004. And the person in charge of those animals is one of the most colourful characters at sea.
Oliver Cruz joined the ship in 2011 as a spa attendant, but when the housekeeping team discovered he had spent eight years in the Philippines as a zoo guide handling snakes and crocodiles, he was reassigned to the kennels. He has run them ever since. The ship carries up to 24 pets per crossing, and Cruz knows each one by name — their diets, their moods, even which kennel "house" they slept in on previous voyages. One regular, a dog he has cared for across 32 crossings, is practically family.
The operation is more elaborate than you might expect. On embarkation day, Cruz checks vaccination records and paperwork at the terminal — UK entry rules are strict about timing. The kennels have an outdoor exercise area nicknamed the poop deck, complete with both an American fire hydrant and a British lamppost. Owners can leave socks, blankets or even worn pajamas in the cabins so their pets feel at home, and compatible dog pairs can share overnight once the dividing partition comes out.
Feeding is a serious business. Meals come from the same galley that serves the ship's 2,759 passengers — think boiled chicken breast, grilled steak, steamed salmon, scrambled egg and the occasional Cumberland sausage — though Cruz insists on zero salt and pepper. His most memorable client was a Bernese mountain dog eating three daily meals of roughly three pounds of minced meat with more than ten ingredients each. The job has its hazards too: Cruz counts more than 50 dog bites, nearly all from breaking up scraps, though he insists none were intentional.
The hardest part? Not the animals — the owners. Cruz has caught "parents" sneaking bacon to pets he has put on restricted diets, and once spent a stormy evening frantically searching the ship for a dog that had quietly been taken back to its owner's cabin. His count, thankfully, caught it. His advice for anyone sailing with a pet: stay calm, because your dog mirrors your mood — and with cats, let them set the pace. When a cat starts chatting to him, he knows they are friends.
Off duty, Cruz drums and plays guitar in the Filipino crew band, once jamming with Travis Barker aboard the ship. His favourite port call is Liverpool, where the devoted Beatles fan — John Lennon tattoos and all — visits Mendips, Strawberry Field and the Cavern Club.
For pet owners who cannot imagine a holiday without their animal, the QM2's kennels are genuinely one of a kind, and Cruz's story shows how seriously the line takes them. It is a warm, human look at a corner of cruising most passengers never see — and a reminder that, as Cruz puts it, some angels have fur.
Story via Condé Nast Traveler.
