Road Tripping #CrossCanada With Cats

Now it is true that I may have a great love for cats, but I am not the crazy cat lady, despite what some people might think.  We only had two cats in the car on our recent road trip #CrossCanada, because their were two of us in the car, we each have one cat, and as we were in Ontario, the cats had to get home to BC too.  You see, nothing crazy here, all perfectly normal. You can put away that lovely white jacket now.

So we did learn several things from our first cat car caravan …

First of all, there is no fighting for shotgun, the cat gets that …

… and whatever other spot she wants in the car.  You will after all have bigger battles to fight with her, like 4 am is not the time we wake up to start driving.  Don’t blame her. Blame changing time zones and whoever it was that fed her breakfast at 6 am the week before you left.

Cats and ducks will travel surprisingly well together.

A few tips:

• Put aside a space just for the cat with her own blanket or cushion.
• The floor of the front seat makes the ideal spot for the litter box, as the cat can easily get to it and it won’t slide.
• Use shallow containers with lids for food and water dishes (like empty sour cream containers).
• Be sure to have plenty of drinking water in the car.
• Carry wet knaps to clean out dishes with ease.
• Figure out some way of providing the cat with shade when they need it.  They do get sunstroke and car sick, just like we do. (and yes, we found this out the hard way)
• Make sure your air conditioning is working.
• When parking, find a shady spot (even if it means you have to walk further) and leave the windows open a crack.

Oh, and take out stock in lint rollers.

Happily the extreme shedding subsides after the first 24 hours.

And despite how the above might sound, it was actually quite easy and enjoyable road tripping with cats.  But then we have pretty gosh darn special cats.