Travel with cats

Tig and Foggy’s Travel LogHello. We are Tigger and Foggy. Despite our English-sounding names, we are French. We live in the centre of a busy little town in the Haute Garonne, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. We are strictly “indoor” cats. We never go outside on our own, but we enjoy watching the world go by from our second floor windowsill.

Our human guardians, Brigid and John, are English and, as we discovered this summer, like to spend weeks at a time visiting their friends and relatives in England and Ireland. As a rule, we don’t go for this foreign travel lark, but our humans went to a lot of trouble (and not inconsiderable expense) to make sure we felt at home wherever we were and everyone was very kind to us so it wasn’t too bad.

Actually, we reckon we are pretty seasoned travellers now. Over a five week period, we took six ferry trips, visited three countries (four if you count the Isle of Wight), and stayed in five different houses. Since this is probably more than the majority of our feline cousins travel in a lifetime, we have put together this travel log for the benefit of other humans who may be considering taking their feline fiends (?!) on holiday.

Car travel

Unfortunately, it is a fact that the very sight of our plastic carriers invokes images of the vet’s surgery. If you think we are going to be happy sweating away in those for hours, think again. We are talking comfort here. No expense spared, Club Class comfort. Brigid ordered our tent-like Car-Go shelter and a matching collapsable pet carrier from Sturdiproducts in the US. The “large” pet carrier is really a little too small for us both, but is useful for transport to and from the car and, heaven forbid, vet visits while we are away.

The Car-Go, on the other hand, is relatively roomy. It has two compartments, separated by a zippered partition, so we can travel comfortably in one half with a covered corner litter tray in the other.

We liked the Car-Go shelter on first sight. Brigid made a couple of thick foam cushions for the base and bought a cheap washable fleece blanket to make it a little more cosy, then set the shelter up in the living room so we could get used to it. If the truth be known, we didn’t sleep in it much at first, as we had a choice of favourite armchairs. But one day, while Hoovering, Brigid plonked the shelter on the return side of our L-shaped sofa. That, needless to say, made it completely irresistable. Of course, at the time, we had no idea that we were going to have to spend up to 15 hours cooped up in it.

As recommended, Brigid took us on a trial run to a neighbouring town in the Car-Go, while she did her shopping. We both hated it … and boycotted use of the shelter for several days after. At least, until Brigid hid some of our dry biscuits in there … Dead sneaky, if you ask us!

Before leaving on holiday, Brigid took the precaution of spraying the interior of the car with Feliway. Feliway, for those of you who don’t know, is an artificial cat pheromone, that is supposed to make us feel comfortable with our surroundings.

After the first couple of hours (during which Foggy winged non-stop), Brigid and John stopped at a roadside picnic area for a rest. They seemed to think it would be a great idea to get us out of the car for a walk on our harnesses. Fat chance! We both hate our harnesses anyway, and being out in the open air, in the sunshine, with all the weird sights and smells, frightened the bejasus out of us. We positively scrambled back to the security of the Car-Go shelter as soon as the car door opened. Once safely zipped back inside, Brigid rubbed a couple of drops each of Bach’s Rescue Remedy in our ears (euck!).

Fine tuning the car environment took a bit of trial and error. John adjusted the temperature, vents and fan speed on the air-conditioning until we were all reasonably comfortable. Then he faded out the rear speakers on the car’s sound system so we didn’t have to put up with Megadeath or whatever they were playing. In truth, however, it took us a while to accept music in the car. Radio worked best: Heart or Magic in the UK, RFM or Traffic in France: you know, middle-of-the-road stuff. The shuffle function on the MP3 player was a disaster. We would just settle down to Debussy’s tinkling “Claire du Lune”, only to be deafened by Led Zepplin on the next track.

Foggy eventually settled down, but poor Tig was panic-stricken, hyper-ventilating and drooling all the way to Boulogne. We feared for his health.

After an eternity, we arrived at the ferry terminal and, once on board, Brigid gave us each a little bowl of home-made chicken stock and some biscuits. It was very comforting, and we managed to sleep a little on the crossing. Somehow, the journey to London wasn’t nearly as bad, and we were both quite hungry when we got indoors.

Subsequent car journeys have not nearly as stressful. Both cats now settle down quickly and seem to sleep for most of the ride. Other people’s houses …

As we have said, the Sturdishelter became our home from home. Every time we arrived somewhere new, it was the first thing to arrive in our bedroom … along with our litter tray.  The new covered corner type works better than the original open one. At least John can’t complain that the crackle of the carrier bag wakes him when we use the litter tray in the middle of the night.

The next thing John and Brigid would do was to plug in two electric Feliway diffusers: one in the bedroom – where we found ourselves confined for long periods when the humans were out for the day – and one in the family living room.

Owing to some misconceived idea that we might damage other people’s furniture by scratching, Brigid bought some horrible things called Soft Claws. Typically, an American invention, they are little plastic false nails that fit over our own claws. They do the job, making it more or less impossible to get a really good grip on even the most tempting corduroy sofa cover, but we made sure they were as difficult as possible to attach. Hee, hee! I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies in that they bought clear claw covers, rather than the rainbow-coloured ones that we saw in the brochure.

It took both of us several attempts and many wasted claw covers, before Tiggy had a full set on his front paws. But, once the supplied SuperGlue had set, they lasted about four weeks before, one by one, they started to drop off as his claws grew. Both cats are actually very good about having their claws clipped, so we never bothered with these again. To be honest, if you can hold the cat still enough to apply the claw-covers, you can probably clip their claws just as easily.

Being indoor cats, we had no particular problems staying in other people’s houses. Our needs are simple: familiar food, bedding and toys, a daily game or two of pokey-paw with the humans, and a good view from at least one window. Each house provided new and interesting toys. Brigid’s mum kindly left a small vase of flowers on her dressing table. Very tasty. But we never quite made up our minds whether her enormous dried flower arrangement was meant to be edible. It certainly didn’t seem very stable, as we managed to knock it over twice before they used it to block access to the fireplace. Tiresome. On the other hand, John’s mum had sliding double-glazed French doors, which were great fun as they could be locked partially open so we could sniff the garden. And Ree had Sid, a lovely, spindly-looking, palm tree, in the corner of her sunny conservatory …

To give them their due, John and Brigid did their best to make our environment as homely as possible. There were a few surprises though. Though they brought plenty of our familiar dry formula food, we are more used to eating raw chicken: corn-fed, yellow, chickens. Unfortunately, it appears that corn-fed chickens are rather more expensive in England than in France, so Brigid substituted cheap supermarket ones, which we didn’t like nearly as much – although she did point out that Tescos sell frozen birds with the giblets still inside, which is rare these days, apparently. Still, at least we got chicken in England. In Ireland, fresh meat was, Brigid said, too expensive, so we had to make do with dry food for a whole week! Finding the right sort of litter also seemd problematic. We use a supermarket brand granular wood-based litter at home. But when our supply ran out, the English supermarkets seemed to stock little other than mineral-type litters, so we tried Bio-Catolet. Bio-Catolet bills itself as eco-friendly but is actually horrid pellets made of recycled paper. The only thing that could be said in its favour is that we had great fun flicking the lightweight pellets around the room. In the end, Brigid found some very expensive wood-based Catsan that was almost identical to the stuff we use at home, only twice the price.

The only real health issue we had in the whole five weeks, was that Foggy got sick on the ferry and threw up all over Tiggy. He didn’t seem to mind the big ro-ro type ferries, but the fast catamarans did it every time. Must be something to do with the different motion. In respect of food, I now home-can cooked chicken with Instincts TC supplement for use on holiday and at boarding kennels.

Pet Passports

To travel within the EC, we had to be micro-chipped and hold Pet Passports showing that we had been vaccinated against rabies amongst other things. The process of getting our Passports started last year when we were only a few months old. Seeing that our humans were English, the French vet asked if they would be wanting to travel back to the UK with us. Just as well, as not only did we have to have two rabies jabs, but we also had to have a blood test after 6 months to show that we had built up enough rabies antibodies. In fact, we seemed to spend the first eight months of our lives being jabbed, snipped and generally drained of blood at every opportunity. And then humans wonder why we hate the vet!

Anyway, eventually the paperwork came through OK, so we assumed we were fit for anything. Alas, no. All these vaccinations need renewing annually and, to add insult to injury, we had to be de-ticked and wormed as well, no more than 48 hours (and no less than 24 hours) before entering the UK. Mind you, after all the fuss, we were pleasantly surprised that there was no vet check-up at the port. All Brigid had to do was to scan our microchips and have them checked against the vaccination record in the Passports.

Tiggy and Fog do not normally wear collars. Although both cats can be identified by their French microchips, I always worried what might happen if they should escape while in the UK or Ireland. As there would be no-one at home in France to answer the phone if they were found, I ordered a couple of safety collars from Kitty Collars, pre-printed with the message, “I’m lost!” and a UK mobile number.

Luggage

John joked that we had more luggage than he did. Luckily the Sturdishelter came in a useful canvas carry bag, into which Brigid was able to pack everything else. Here is our list of essential holiday packing:

Disclaimer

Cats are capricious animals. What suits one cat will not suit another. While it does not claim to be authoratitive, the above log is provided as an aide to other owners who may be planning to travel with their cats. It represents a humourous, though accurate, account of our preparations for a five week trip, during which our two, 14-month old, neutered male indoor cats, travelled from our home in south west France to London, the Isle of Wight, Ireland (via Wales), and back. They stayed in five very different homes and experienced varying levels of freedom. We believe that our care and sensitivity to the cats’ needs paid dividends in that we experienced no major issues and both cats returned home safe, healthy and unstressed. How another cat might react in the same circumstances is anyone’s guess.