I used to travel with a cat more and we just had a smaller litter box. It stayed in a hard Carrier so that she didn’t get litter all over. Then she free roamed the car
We once had a 20+ hours roadtrip and my mother's boyfriends cat was leashed on a small cat tree in the middle back seat. Apart from one incident she was ok with being let out the car (on a leash of course) and do her buisness every 3 hours.
Also every 3 hours is really plenty, cats are pretty good at holding it in.
(No travel experience, but my cat has a talent for sneaking into places getting locked up 12+ hours like over night or working day in the basement and such and there's never been any messes.)
Was very surprised when a few months after my roommate got a couple of cats one of them didn’t come for breakfast. Since usually even opening the food closet resulted in a stampede and circling howling vultures.
We were kinda worried since both of them had a penchant for escaping, but eventually we found him in the upstairs office. He’d taken a nap under my desk when I was playing video games the night before, and since there’s only a couple inch gap I didn’t think to check under it before closing the door.
No mess in the room, and he didn’t even visit the litterbox until after breakfast. Had to’ve been over 12 hours.
Sure! I guess she didn't go every 3 hours, that would be quite excessive for most cats. I just wanted to highlight that it is not such a difficult thing, thankfully. Then moving a bit every couple of hours is good for kitty and hooman.
Yep, our cat once got outside and stuck on our Chimney for almost 24 hours. She snuck out the night before while my husband was going on to our balcony, and then we noticed the next evening that we had not seen her. We didn't notice at first because it was shortly after adopting her and she was prone to hiding quite a bit still. Finally when we saw her we got her inside, and she did go use the litter box shortly after we got her in, but it didn't seem to be her first priority even. Though I suppose she had not had food or water, either.
I've heard letting your pets free roam in the car isnt the safest? Because any accident could lead to them just flying out of the car because they arent properly held down like we are with seatbelts.
Not trying to be rude or anything, just dont want anyone losing their pets in car accidents
you’re correct - the safest place for a kitty on the road is in a carrier that is secured. if kitty needs to stretch their legs or use the litter box, it’s just a matter of more frequent stops.
Yup. I was trying out a new harness that clipped into a seatbelt buckle for my Finley, who likes to look out the window and enjoys car rides. He did fine with his old harness and never wriggled out, but he's growing. We were on the last leg of our 20 minute trip, on a non busy road, and Finley wriggled out of his new harness and crawled up front and sat in my lap. As cute as it was driving with a happy kitty on my lap, it's not safe! He is going to have to sit in his hard crate from now on with his brother.
This has been a concern of mine, too. Cats will get thrown from cars (or hurled into people as deadly, clawed projectiles) just as easily as adults and children--maybe easier.
I have hard-sided carriers and sometimes try to put a belt around them, even though I know it wouldn't really hold in a wreck (maybe if I had to brake hard). I'm planning to get a soft-sided carrier with seatbelt compatibility (it's on that list of things I need to buy that keeps getting ignored over all of my wants :-p) so at least the cat won't go anywhere if something happens.
Of course, I realize how hard it is for people in RVs to keep their cats shut up when they're on the road for hours at a time and their entire vehicle is the cat's house. I feel like at least some kind of secured kennel would be a good idea there, something to keep them from actually being flung a great distance.
You're right. My cat cannot stand a carrier - he will yowl incessantly and soil any clothwe put in it. So, we use a secure harness and tether him to a seat. Yes we know about carrier training but we adopted him at age 11 and he doesn't like any treats or toys, so at this point it's about getting him from Point A to B as safety and comfortably as possible. Has worked well so far!
I was once traveling from Georgia to Ohio with my kitten in his carrier. In July, so it was hot as shit. If I had to go, I would try to stop at rest stops where nobody would care or notice if I brought a carrier into the bathroom. However, on the way back, I got food poisoning that started hitting in the last 3 hours of the drive. So I was pretty much pulling over at every exit and going to the bathroom in the first building that had one. McDonalds, Gas stations, Waffle House, whatever. I did not care. But I knew I needed to book it in without being noticed and if I walked in with a carrier, a restaurant would (rightfully) tell me I couldn't come in. So when I was driving, I cranked the AC to the coldest it would go, which was absolutely miserable for me since I had the chills, but it was enough to keep the car cool when I went to the bathroom. I would give myself no more than 5 minutes to get out whatever I could get out and get back to the car. When I'd get back, the car was still cool inside and the kitten was fine. I was just praying nobody would try to be a good Samaritan and smash my window when the car wasn't hot.
Ha, he actually did well on a leash so I would just take him to a patch of dirt that was out of the way and let him do his business there. But he didn’t really go at all on the drive there or back.
Oh... the “they” was kind of vague lol. Well my answer for the cat is I left his harness on. At stops id put the leash on him and brought him to patches of dirt or grass that were away from people (like the woods by a gas station) so his pee/poop wouldn’t bother anyone.
My cat is not a traveler, but he is a dutiful litter box user. During the drive home on his first ever trip, 20 minutes into a 4-hr drive, he began meowing in a way that led me to believe he needed to go to the bathroom.
We stopped at a single-car pullover spot alongside the mountain we were driving along, put some leaves in the litter box, set the litter box on the passenger seat floor, and he took his dump without hesitation. I was so proud.
Unfortunately, we drove away with my purse on the roof of the car, so that drive turned into a much longer trip, but that’s another story.
I bought a large-ish dog kennel designed for a trunk which were able to hold a medium-sized litterbox and a wicker cat basket that she could sleep both on and in.
My aunt and uncle owned a yacht on an inland loch ("lake" for the non-Scots). If they were racing it was different, but if there were cruising they'd anchor offshore, blow up an inflatable dingy, tie a rope to it, and shove it in the direction of the shore with the corgi in it. Dog jumped out, dig her business, then jumped in again, and was pulled back to the yacht.
In my experience the car ride is stressful enough they just don't do it. I drove across the country with my cat when I moved and stopped periodically to try to give her a chance to use the box but she never used it once until we stopped for the night
I've moved from NY to Ohio, then to Illinois, then to North Carolina. I always keep the boxes in the back of my truck and bring the box in my truck and take them out of their carriers and physically put them in there at every gas stop. They've never used boxes in those moves but I always do it anyway.
We did 42 hours in 4 days - honestly, our cat didn’t use the litterbox we had in the car. We bought a massive, flexible, pet carrier and put a small box in it, but he just slept in the passenger foot area the whole time.
We’ve done 8-9 hour trips with our cats with no issues. It’s kind of sad because while they have the option to drink water, they generally didn’t want to and therefore didn’t really need to go. They mostly just wanted to sit in someone’s lap and pretend they weren’t in the car because they hated it so much.
We keep a litter box in the backseat. Kitty is in a harness and tethered to a seat with a leash to keep him as safe as we can without being in a carrier. We tried the carrier but he gets so terribly stressed, soils it (dutiful litterbox user!) and he was adopted as a senior so it is hard to train those anxieties out. It has worked well as a compromise for us!
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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '19
if someone is traveling with a pet and they need to do their business how do they do it ??