Moving cats

Buddy in his carrier, moving across country

A little over a year ago, my husband and I moved from the Midwest to the Southwest. We, of course, took our cats with us. Which meant that we had to move them more than 1500 miles to a new home. I spent days – ok, more like weeks – worrying about how to move them. I mean, they hated the short car rides to the vet, how were they going to handle a ride across country?

The first thing I did was get them used to a harness. They are indoor cats, and they don’t normally wear collars. Even though they were going to be in carriers, I wanted them on leashes too, just in case. So, I went out and bought two harnesses and two leashes. I wish I had thought to have taken pictures of them the first time I got the harnesses on them, but I was laughing too hard.

Buddy was first, because if he saw me ‘torture’ Max first, no way would he have come near me. I got the harness on him with relative ease, and set him on the floor. You would have thought I’d set him in a puddle of glue. He laid down and would not move, even when I tugged on the leash. Max, being curious, had to see what I’d done to Buddy. So, I got the harness on Max and set him down. He did walk – or slink anyway – across the floor, but I don’t think there was any light between his belly and the floor. After I’d taken the harnesses off them that first time, they spent hours licking themselves and each other, getting rid of the cat version of hat hair (harness hair?) So much for the first harness-training session.

I put the harnesses on them every day, increasing the time every day, until they’d pretty much gotten used to them, or could at least tolerate them. They still weren’t walking well with the leashes, but they weren’t going to be doing much walking anyway. I just wanted a way to keep them under control when they were out of their cages.

Since they were going to have to ride in the cab of the moving truck with my husband and me, I needed some sort of cage or kennel that would fit on the seat between us. I couldn’t find anything suitable that they could be in together, so I got two soft-side, collapsible carriers that look like tents. These fit side by side on the seat, and had screens on the side so they got plenty of air, and they could look out and enjoy the scenery.

I also bought a collapsible dog kennel, and small, disposable litter boxes. When we stopped at night, we took the bigger kennel into the motel rooms, fixed up a litter box and put it at the back of the kennel. We gave them food and water, and let them use the litter box. Then we clipped their leashes to their harnesses, and let them “explore” and stretch their legs, before putting them both in the kennel until morning.

It took us four days to drive to our new home, and the cats traveled very well. Most of the motels we stopped at were Motel 6, and had no problem with the cats. The last night, we stopped in Williams, AZ, at a little motel that advertised they were pet-friendly. Just to be sure, we mentioned when we were checking in that we had cats. They told us they didn’t allow cats, only dogs. Sorry, but that’s not very pet-friendly. So, we left and went down the street to the Motel 6.

My worries over moving the cats were unfounded, as they did extremely well. I was impressed.

Photo credit: Beth VanHoose

August 3rd, 2009 by Beth VanHoose | Posted in Cat Behavior, Cat Stories | (0)