How I took my Cats on a Road Trip
Hey foodies, I’m taking a break from recipes this week to let you in on some secrets I learned along the way to best take your cats on a road trip. In the weeks leading up to my recent trip, I did plenty of research on traveling with cats–traveling in a car, going camping, hikes, harness training…I left no stone unturned.
There’s not a lot of information about the practical side of traveling with cats. There’s a lot of “my cat loves road trips!” which is definitely not helpful for my old weirdos who’ve traveled far too often and still hate it.
My Free Cat Road Trip Lists
Before I get into it, here’s a list of things that I had on my list for this trip. I’m a huge fan of lists and had a clipboard filled with NINE different lists for this trip. I’ve narrowed it down for you to just two. There’s a packing list, but also things we needed to do before we left. Download it and make it your own!
Our Cats Travel Backstory
In case you’re new here, here’s a little backstory on my cats! My husband is in the USAF. That being said, we’ve moved a lot and traveled to visit family a lot. Since adopting our first cat, Katya, I’ve moved with her from California to my parents in Georgia, road tripped with our newly purchased car during the husband’s Christmas break to Florida, then to our new apartment in San Angelo, TX. In Texas we adopted our next cat, Coal. From there we drove up to our new base in Bellevue, NE–we were pulling a Uhaul trailer and that trip took a few days. We adopted our last cat, Ash, here. From Nebraska we moved to England (had to take a road trip to St Louis to drop off our car), moved houses once while there, then moved back to Nebraska, which is where we are currently. That’s a LOT more traveling than a lot of people have done, let alone cats! Lots of road trips and flights and so much stress on our cats.
Coal, our male cat, had some issues last autumn that we had to take him to the vet nearly every other week. Why is it always in the off hours that pets need emergency care? He had urinary issues and was getting blocked from stress from some changes and visitors at our house and was constantly trying to pee all over the house. Thankfully we were able to get him through it and he’s now on a c/d food diet and he hasn’t had any issues since.
Deciding to Road Trip with Cats
Our plan was to visit family in Florida for a couple of weeks. It was a difficult decision to decide which stress we wanted to put our cats through–a 40+ hour road trip or leaving them with someone else for 2+ weeks. With the way prices are right now, we decided it’d be cheaper to drive than fly, so we decided to bring the cats.
Alright, that’s enough set up. Let’s get into the useful stuff for you!
Cat Harnesses
Did you know that cat and dog harnesses are different? Cat harnesses need to put pressure across the chest rather than the neck. Make sure to do some research for which brand will work best for you and your cat! We went with Rabbitgoo and got a different BRIGHT color for each of our cats so it’d be easy to spot them. Our cats are white, black, and gray, so having something on them stand out if they managed to get out of the car and run off was essential. Our cats are all around 10 lbs and the small size fits great. My one complaint about these harnesses is that 2 of our 3 cats were able to get the neck straps loose and get a paw through it. The harness was still on them, but I’m sure it was uncomfortable.
Something to consider is that not all cats like harnesses. If you decide it’s essential for travel like we did, you can start training them in the weeks before you leave. Even with nearly 2 months of training, Coal still hates his harness. He has learned to move while it’s on though, even if you can tell he doesn’t like it.
We kept harness time, or “Adventure Cat Mode” short at first, putting the harnesses on each cat and giving them treats as a reward for movement that challenged them. For Katya, this was easy–she doesn’t really care that she has a harness on. For Ash, she seemed okay at first, but then started just laying down and refusing to move, even for treats. For Coal, this meant bringing out the very best treats and he would maybe crawl or pull himself on the carpet towards the treat. If you have better luck with your cats–we do have fairly old cats–you can move on and train them to walk with a leash and go outside and ride in the car. Do your own research with these steps as I don’t have first-hand experience on the best way to do this.
The Litterbox
This is always a tricky one. I had originally planned on buying a travel litterbox with a zippered lid, but knowing our cats, I wanted something with higher walls to keep the litter a little more contained in the car. Those are $20-30 anyways, so I decided to come up with my own.
My next idea was to cut one of those large plastic storage bins like I’ve seen on Pinterest. You can have the litter box on one side, a mat inside, and room for the litter scoop. It also makes it easy to carry into hotels. Unfortunately all of our bins have been purchased in the past couple of years for actual storage, so I didn’t really want to ruin one for this. Cardboard box to the rescue!
I ended up finding a box that would fit a disposable litter box (much cheaper and easy to toss when we’re done with it). I cut a U-shaped hole in one side, leaving about 4” on the bottom for stability. I also cut a hand hole on the opposite side to make it easier to carry. I taped some blue pet wee pads (big box from Costco is a really good deal) all around the inside walls and floor of the box. There was just enough room to put the litter scoop inside the box along with the litter box.
For scooping the litter, you could use plastic grocery bags like I have in the past, but I found that bringing a roll of dog waste bags was so much easier! It’s small and takes up a lot less space and you don’t have to worry about finding a bag without a hole in it.
Making a Cat Highway
If you’re a Jackson Galaxy fan like me, you know about the cat highway concept. Creating a space for your cats with the ability to walk from one place to another without touching the ground–basically, cats love to play “The Ground is Lava” and it’s best to optimize your cat-friendly spaces. This is a little trickier in a car, especially with the limited space.
We rearranged our car throughout the trip and by the end I think we came up with the best layout for our cats. Coal loved sitting up higher and being able to look out the window. He liked to be able to change spots too, so there needed to be more than one. Katya decided she wanted to hide the entire trip and only came out a couple of times. Ash was a mix. She mostly wanted to hide, but there were points where she wanted to check things out. We sometimes saw her up on Coal's platforms and occasionally she came up front with me to get some more air.
We took our Subaru Forester, so we did have a lot of space with the backseat folded down. We used external storage for our clothes (more on that later) to make more space for the cats. The litterbox setup took up a lot of space, but was essential. We used our cooler covered in a blanket on the way down, but Coal ended up chilling on it nearly the entire time, and it worked out better to use a smaller box there and put the cooler in our cargo rack–no cold drinks for us, but an easy fix to fill a cup with ice every time we stopped for gas. We used their hard-carrier as a hiding spot and bought a short cat tower while there to finish out the space. I’ll include some photos, including my concept sketches so you can see better!
Cat-Proofing the Car
This is a must. There are a couple places you don’t want your cats–basically anywhere around the driver–so those spaces need to be blocked off. I grabbed some old throw blankets, rolled them up, then stuffed them behind our seats so they couldn’t tunnel down and underneath. I also used blankets to cover anything, like our cooler, that I wanted to cushion and not get litter tracked directly onto. Which leads me to my next point–covering your car seats so they don’t get nasty in the case of an accident. Anything can happen with pets, so covering my seats was a must. I found a pet hammock seat cover at Costco for around $20, which was a huge help. We also made sure to place a litter-trapping mat in front of the litter box to limit the tracking.
Scents & Feliway
The blankets are best if they smell like you/your house already, so set them in main traffic areas a couple of weeks before you leave. I also highly recommend using Feliway spray in your car before you leave. We were introduced to Feliway by our veterinarian when Coal was going through all of his stress. We’ve been using the diffusers in our cat hangout areas and they’ve helped so much with the territory battles. During this trip, I sprayed the car about 15 minutes before we loaded everyone up, the hotel room, and we plugged in a diffuser in our bedroom at my in-laws house.
Food & Water
Having a spot for food and water is probably one of the easiest things. We used a plastic leftover dish and topped off the water when we stopped. Realistically they were too stressed to eat while we were in the car, so on the way back we only fed them at night in the hotel. Thankfully they all bounced back to their normal selves within a day or two of being home.
One thing you do need to note is that cats have sensitive stomachs, so it’s best to only give them bottled/filtered water while traveling.
Air Flow
This one I didn’t see mentioned in my research: air flow. Our car doesn’t have vents in the back, so I knew I wanted to have some sort of fan in the back to keep the air moving, namely the A/C. We ended up using a power adapter so we could plug a standard US 2-prong into our car. We used our smallest air purifier, Blueair 411+, for this to also freshen the air in case of any intense litter box deposits.
Other options I considered were a battery powered fan (like you’d use for camping), or a clip-on fan with the power adapter.
Extra Storage
We were only gone for 2 weeks plus travel, but since the cats need a surprising amount of space for both them and their stuff, we decided to add more storage. A rooftop carrier makes your car less fuel-efficient, so we wanted another option. We wouldn’t have enough cargo to get a trailer. We decided on a trailer hitch cargo rack/basket. It fits into your trailer hitch (we needed a 1 ¼” adaptor) and you can strap down all of your gear. We’ve seen a lot of people use those sturdy black and yellow bins, but we ended up getting a waterproof cargo bag and it worked like a dream! We were able to put our suitcases directly into it and even threw in some last minute shoes and things. We strapped it all down with a cargo net and some bungee cords, though it was probably overkill.
Make sure you take note of your license plate visibility! We were driving through several different states, so we wanted to make sure it was visible and able to be seen at least with lights on it while driving at night. On the way down, we were able to arrange the cargo so it could still be seen mounted on the car. On the way back we ended up mounting it to the cargo rack with some zip ties.
Where to Stop
Stopping with cats sounds easy, but if they get freaked out by weird sounds and people, it gets tricky. Our cats were already stressed enough by the car, so minimizing extra stress is ideal.
Rest stops
When we didn’t need gas or a restock on drinks or food, we stopped at rest stops. We found it was a lot easier to find a quiet area for our cats to take a little break and creep out of their hiding places. Gas stations this was rarely possible.
Hotels
This one is so tricky when you have 3 cats. So many hotels officially say they have a 2 pet limit, but if you call, they likely will make an exception if you’re only staying for one night. On the way down I had a couple of La Quintas picked out, depending on how far we made it. Once we were on the road and had a better idea of which one we wanted to stop at, I tried calling, but no one answered. We showed up and the doors were locked. There were a few other hotels off of that exit that took pets, so I made a call and the first one happened to be a Sleep Inn. They said yes, they’d take us, and that was it.
On the way back, we called ahead to La Quinta Inn and a few others in neighboring towns and they didn’t pick up (what’s with hotels not answering their phones??). We made a call to American Express Concierge this time and they were able to get us answers within the hour. If you’re military, I highly recommend signing up for AmEx since the annual fee is waived. It’s been a huge help for us with various trips, especially with last minute changes.
