Whether or not you use a rental truck for moving your household, here are some details you need to remember if there’s a cat in the family. Work these tips into your overall plan for your cat’s safety and well being.

Obviously it’s a shock to a cat to see its favorite dwelling places being carried out the door and into the moving truck. Then comes the shock of the ride, and then the new environment itself.  All you can do about minimizing moving trauma is keep the cat isolated and contained in its carrier in the quietest place in the house — both the house you are vacating and the one you’re moving into — until any helpers have left and the extra activity has settled down. But there are some practical tips to be added. Planning ahead is the smartest thing you can do. 

Get copies of the cat’s medical records and vaccination certificates from your vet, and discuss what to do about any transferring any prescriptions to a new vet.

Put the cat in its carrier in that quiet room we mentioned a few days before moving day. This way it will become accustomed to the carrier before the trauma of loading it into the truck and then all the noise and motion once the truck is rolling. 
On moving day feed the cat a small meal about three hours before you leave. This will minimize the possibility of motion sickness.

If you haven’t already done so, put some of the cat’s toys in the carrier.

On arrival at your new place, unload as much as is accessible into the one room where you’ll put the cat until things settle down. Then put the cat in there along with some items of yours that contain your scent. This helps a lot while while you’re busy unpacking and still unable to spend time with the cat.

When you do let the cat out, be sure it is wearing its ID tag. And take the hint in another article in this blog on this topic about an extra ID tag that shows your cell phone number. 

And remember, cats demand rental trucks for moving!

Cat Moving Tales from the Blog-O-Sphere

Moving Makes Cats Anxious Cats are generally independent of their people, but social relationship concerns do still occur. Cats get rather territorial or aggressive, so cats may have issues both when moving out of a familiar home to a new, unfamiliar environment.

Moving Makes Some Cats Scream The heaviest cat screamed at the top of her lungs: a loud, desperately hysterical scream that was like a car alarm going off while she climbed on my head and tried to figure out WHY she was stuck inside this tiny, moving box with me.

Moving Cats Means Tails on Fire Today we relocated Spot, one of my feral cats. I don’t think she was any too happy about it. When we released her at her new home, she shot out of the cage like her tail was on fire.

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