Witchy feline disappears an earbud

Meet Salem, a mischievous and frisky feline from New York.

“When I first moved out of my parents’ place, my first thought was, ‘I need a cat’—and I got two,” says Nationwide member David S. A first-time pet parent, David teamed up with his roommates and brought home three foster cats to join their cohort.

“I always wanted a black cat named Salem,” David says, referring to the character from “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” When he met the future Salem, their connection was instant—but Salem’s connection to her brother was equally strong. “They were inseparable, so I ended up with both,” David says.

Salem and her brother, Obi—a la Obi Wan Kenobi— are close buds but couldn’t be more different in personality. Obi is goofy and loves to play fetch at 3 a.m., while Salem is a bit more mischievous with a strange “thing” against electronic devices.

“When she’s not hanging with Obi, she’s yelling at me for attention,” David says. “And when I have my Airpods on, they're noise cancelling. And then Salem understands that I can't hear her. Like, he's not giving me attention. Whenever I put them on the table, she'll bat it away, throw it on the floor and, like, mess with it ... But I always end up forgiving her when she gives me her guilty eyes.”

One night, this beef with digital devices led to an emergency vet visit and this purr-plexing Hambone-nominated mystery.

What happened?

“I get home super late one day, and I drop my Airpods on my table,” David remembers. “Then, I hear a smack on the ground.” A common occurrence thanks to Salem, David went to retrieve the missing earbud from the floor and discovered it was nowhere to be seen.

“So, I'm panicking because—okay, where did it go?” he says. There were two options. “Obi is also a picky eater. So, I really didn't suspect that he that ate my Airpods.”

Unsure if Salem swallowed the pods, David listened close to his feline friend: “I put music on loud, and I'm like, ‘Do I hear anything?’ I swear I did.”

So, David loaded up Salem (and Obi just to be safe) for a trip to the emergency veterinarian. Just before going in for the X-ray, he checked the Find My iPhone feature and the Airpod turned up—back at his house. So, David apologized and made his way home.

However, once he arrived, he realized the first Airpod—the not-missing one—was the one being tracked. He searched again, then again, and found ... nothing.

“I had that panic again of being a parent,” he says. “I'm like, ‘I really need to make sure that she didn't eat it.’ I go back to the ER at 6 a.m. and finally get the X-ray. No Airpods to be found.”

“It’s been a year now, and I still have not found it,” David adds. “I'm not getting another one. She wins.”

How Nationwide helped

Luckily everyone was healthy (minus loss of sleep) and Nationwide covered the bill for this just-in-case experience. “When I adopted my cats, my friends who were pet owners said, ‘You should get insurance, especially as you adopt them, because if something happens, you're going to be very in debt.’”

While something technically didn’t happen to Salem and Obi during the Airpod fiasco, David was still protected from the unexpected financial burden (his other electronics, well, that’s a different story).

“Having that insurance is super helpful for situations like this where I don't have to worry about paying for an X-ray that's like $500,” David says. “Just having that extra layer of security. Nationwide was able to give me a lot more confidence that I could just do this random X-ray at 4:00 a.m. in the morning.”