Kitty travel??

[tucsoncarol]

I know a lot of you travel with your kitty. I want to take one of our cats with us now, and wonder about any problems. How many of you let your kitty out at the site? Do they get lost? If you have an enclosure, what kind? Has your kitty always gone with you or were they introduced to it when grown. What about extra vaccinations? Shoot, I'm sure I had more questions, I just can't remember what they were.

Some of you know that my old Siamese cat, Rudy, died in September, so I now have two kitties. Sharkey is too old (16 years), too sick (kidney trouble) and too mean(!!!!!) to travel. That leaves Wow. I originally bought her for my mother when she became very ill, and when she died, I inherited THE CAT. At well over twenty pounds and full of attitude, she is a force to be reckoned with. She is very sweet natured, though, and still young at about 6 years so we want her to go along.

Her full name, by the way, is Kittiwow. My mother was in a childhood phase with her dementia, and it seemed like a great name to her.

Funnily, since we call the cat Wow, when we are in conversation and say "wow" about something, the cat answers.

[B_and_D]

Our traveling kitty is 16 now, and we just started taking her with us last year. We bought a harness and a leash for her and also a larger, fold-down carry cage (that we didn't use at all this last trip). I thought that she might try to bolt out of the truck or the trailer, but so far (with a one time exception) she doesn't even like to go out of the trailer. She's pretty sedentary, so this doesn't really surprise me. We take her in and out of the trailer with the leash & harness on, and she usually just walks back to the trailer. She seems to know where it is. We took her in and out of the trailer in our yard at home so that she would become familiar with it. I brought along her current vaccination records (the vet bill), and also made up some "lost cat" flyers with a picture just in case. I try to get her to go out of the trailer for fresh air, so I carry her outside and put her down with the harness and leash on once in a while. What's difficult is that she likes to go underneath things (including the trailer) and the leash is too short to permit much of the type of exploration that she seems to prefer.

One evening in Desert Hot Springs we took her outside; she started really sniffing around and wanted to explore much more than usual, and after checking out one particular palm tree she seemed to kind of go crazy. She tried to get away from me, and was scratching at and fighting the leash. This is really out of character for her but I guess it just goes to show that pets can be unpredictable.

I've seen people with fold-down metal enclosures for their dogs, but I don't know what people with cats would use. Maybe one of those enclosures would work with something over the top, maybe some tensor-type fencing material? We tried a screen room with stakes all around, but it didn't work, too many gaps around the bottom. We even added a bunch of grommets and extra stakes.

She seems to like her "hole" that we made for her under the dinette seat next to the heater. The heater doesn't bother her. She spent a lot of time curled up inside there. We'd look around and ask each other where the cat was, and then we'd say "Kitty in the hole!" if that's where she was.

My cat, Carleton, is an indoor cat so he travels in the pickup when we are underway and stays in the trailer the rest of the time. He loves travel - I don't know his back story because I adopted him at 18 months of age, so I can't say if he always loved it. He enjoys looking out the windows and doesn't seem too interested in escaping. Actually, he did escape once for about two minutes and did not enjoy it.

He has a scratching post/litter pan setup in the underbed cabinet and a few toys. I always carry his vaccination records with me. Also, I made a dozen small "Lost" notices with his photo, description, my cell phone number, and a blank area where I can write in our campsite number. (Then my boyfriend's dog got jealous so I made some for him, too.) If either of the pets is missing, we will be ready with these notices to post and hand out. I sure hope I never have to use these, but if I do I will be very glad I was ready for immediate action.