We have taken our three cats — Ellie, Equinox and Kaylee — thousands of miles in a 2015 Toyota Tacoma over the past three months.
These are ordinary cats who hate going to the vet. Yet they have road-tripped successfully across the country from Colorado to Pennsylvania, then PA to Vermont, then VT back to PA, then the big one: PA to central Mexico.
The ultimate destination for this marathon road trip is Tlaquepaque, near Guadalajara, which is still 250 kms away from where we are right now. (We are waiting to finish the trip until the gas shortages resolve enough for us to get the gas we need to make the final journey.)
In the meantime, as we all roost at a sweet little AirBnB apartment in Leon, I’d like to share a few tips about traveling with cats.
Tips for Traveling With Cats
Advance preparation is key
Introduce your cats to their cages well in advance so they can form a positive relationship. We put the cat cages out in the family room two weeks before the trip and placed our cats’ food bowls inside at mealtime, to give them a positive association with the cages. When it was time to leave on the trip, they got in happily. (This only works once.)
Expect them to hate it
“Put me in a cage for 8 hours and I will sit and not complain,” said no cat, ever. Expect a lot of yowling and complaining. Expect them to have accidents and to occasionally vomit from the motion of the vehicle.
Visit the vet in advance
The vet gave us ideas for reducing cat anxiety, including kitty valium and anti-nausea drugs. The nausea stuff helped Equinox but the valium made it worse for Ellie. But we also made sure they were up-to-date on their shots and in good general health, and got their claws trimmed.
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| The cats with their favorite handler, Lexie |
Keep your expectations low
Don’t expect your feline companions to travel as long as you can. After all, humans can stop every couple of hours to stretch their legs, have a snack, and use a bathroom. Even dogs can get out of the car to exercise a little and relieve themselves. But cats are stuck in a tiny cage for the duration. No bathroom breaks. No chance to stretch, or even stand up. So don’t expect them to last 12 hours a day just because you can.
We learned this the hard way on the first leg of our journey, Colorado to Pennsylvania. Bob was trying to power-drive across the United States and the cats let him know in no uncertain terms that any more than 10 hours on the road was decidedly NOT OK with them. First, Equinox had diarrhea just an hour and a half into the first leg of the trip, which was a portent of things to come. The next day, poor Ellie, a fastidiously private litter box user, let out a long, throaty, almost otherworldly groan of embarrassment as she peed in her cage after 10 hours on the road. Every day for the first four days, at least one cat vomited in a cage.
Kaylee, the scaredy-cat at home, turned out to be a natural traveler. She never cried, peed or pooped; she was a perfect little angel in the car. She just hid in hotel rooms. (More on that later.)
So we had a family meeting and agreed: 8-hour limit, if possible. That’s nice for humans, too, because perhaps we can get a run in after eight hours on the road, or do some yoga, or move in some way to compensate for all the hours sitting in the truck.
Be prepared on the road
Here’s our advice for some advance moves to make to ensure success on the road with your cats:
- Multiple stops present multiple chances to escape, and nothing can ruin an adventure more than losing a precious furry part of your family. So get your cats chipped and register them.
- Get them collars with tags that have your email and phone number on them,
- Pack a kitty emergency kit that includes cleaning supplies, wipes, washcloths and towels.
- Create a bag of basic necessities: wet and dry cat food (with plastic lids for cans and clips for the food bag), a bottle of water, cat litter, a litter box or two, litter box bags (expensive but essential for travel), pooper scooper,food bowls, a plastic Tupperware container for water, plastic spoons for scooping out food, kitty toys and a scratching post.
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| Kaylee settling into a hotel room in Leon |
Help them feel comfortable
Here’s what we did:
- Lexie has a quilt the cats love. It went onto her bed first thing in each hotel room and gave them a sense of home.
- We also threw out a couple of their favorite toys.
- In the car, we made sure the music wasn’t too loud or jarring. They preferred Amazon Music’s soft pop station to rap, rock or even country.
- We adjusted their food to minimize vomiting — just a little dry food first thing in the morning, and an anti-anxiety pill, if needed an hour before the trip.
- Some cats like thundershirts to ease anxiety. Ellie likes to wear a harness.
Make sure they are secure
We initially had a vision of happy adventure cats wandering around the backseat, sleeping in our laps while tethered by harnesses to a cable Bob was going to run between the two front seats. But we discovered, after a little research, that that was a stupid and dangerous idea. Free-range cats can become like rockets in case of an accident.
So instead we bought two stackable, hard-plastic cat cages for Ellie and Equinox, who rode double-decker, Kaylee beside them in another cage. All were tightly secured by seatbelts to the back seat, and Lexie sat beside them murmuring words of comfort when needed.
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| Stacked cats |
Expect resistance
Once the cats figure out that you will take them out of the car to stay in a hotel every night, and then put them back into the car the next morning to travel for another eight hours, they will try to thwart you. They will go into hiding as soon as you start re-packing your suitcases. In one hotel room, Kaylee found a spot deep inside the box springs of Lexie’s bed, and we had to disassemble the bed to root her out. In another, we came back from breakfast to find NO cats in the hotel room. They were all hiding deep in corners and crevices.
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| Can you find the two cats hiding in this picture? (They are inside the trundle bed) Note their favorite purple quilt, which was gifted to Lexie from the Piecemakers at Evergreen Lutheran Church. |
We finally learned to contain them early in the morning, before they could hide. In this photo, they are contained inside the shower in the Hotel Soleil in Leon.
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| Cats coralled into the shower at Hotel Soleil Business Class |
Give them a break now and then
In the middle of our five-day trip to Mexico, we stopped in New Orleans for a short layover and rented an apartment with two bedrooms and lots of room to run around. They loved it!
Upon arrival, reward them
At each stop, the first priority was getting the cats out of the cages and giving them food and water immediately. Since they hadn’t had their usual half a can of wet food for breakfast, they would receive that right away, and then get the rest of the can at bedtime.
Find pet-friendly lodging
We found a website called Bring Fido that helps you find pet-friendly lodging (including in Mexico) and allows you to book through Booking.com. There are also certain hotel chains that are universally pet-friendly, including Days Inn (which also has laundry facilities), Super 8 (surprisingly nice for a budget chain), and TownPlace Suites by Marriott. For stays of more than one night, we would visit AirBnB or Homeaway and search for “pet-friendly” in the filters. Hotels usually charge an extra fee per day per pet and cap the number allowed at 2. If we were staying more than one night, renting an apartment was more economical and a lot more comfortable for everyone.
It gets easier
The initial three-person struggle to get each resisting, flailing cat into a cage became a two-person efficient system that became a one-person easily-managed task. A cat crying for 10 hours straight became crying half the time became crying just the first hour. Be patient. Traveling long hours in a car isn’t fun for anyone. Expect to be showered with affection in the hotel room, because they are so grateful to be out of the car and with you again.
Ellie still cries when she gets in the cage. But it doesn’t last the whole time anymore. Kaylee now sits like a Buddha watching the world go by out the front windshield, while Equinox, stomach calm from anti-nausea meds, just goes to sleep. We listen to more Ed Sheeran than we would like, and life on the road with cats is good.
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| The Buddha cat |
