I consider myself an experienced ‘cat parent.’ We got our first family cat when I was around eight years old. Lassie was an experienced traveler. She went on lots of road trips with us and she only misbehaved occasionally. She even took a few boat trips. After Lassie came Sasha, who did the same, and was very good about traveling as long as she had a lap to sit on.

When I moved to Chicago after college, one of the first things I did was adopt Hedwig. She quickly became an experienced cross country traveler, boarding planes with me whenever I would go home to Louisiana for the holidays. She was so quiet once she was in her carrier that I could often sneak her on without paying the pet fee to put her under the seat. As long as you got the cat through the security line undetected, the x-ray techs didn’t care if you took a cat out of a carrier and walked through holding her. Their job wasn’t to check tickets. (They eventually changed the way they check people in so that you aren’t able to do this anymore. They also upped the prices. It costs more to put a cat under your seat now than it does for your own ticket sometimes.)

Jake overlapped with Hedwig for a couple of years and they traveled together. But Jake was with me for sixteen years and became the ultimate traveler. Not only did Jake accompany me on airplanes down south, he took Amtrak trains with me to Dean’s family. He took road trips with me. He stayed in hotels. He even spent some time on a boat himself. I drug him along on the el, on the bus, I even had friends pick him up at my place and take the el train with him to meet me at restaurants and hand him off.

I didn’t leave Jake often, unless I was going overseas. And then I had friends who would come and stay with him. During these times I was always fortunate enough to see him appear in their social media posts, on their laps, taking naps with them, etc. Jake was best friends with all of my friends.

Jake loved staying in hotel rooms with me. He seemed to know when we were going to visit a set of his grandparents and as soon as he was out of his carrier, he made himself at home and wasted no time in enjoying the particular aspects that made their houses fun to him. (Fireplaces, basements, staircases, shag carpeting, and lots of attention.)

After Jake, Dean and I adopted Aang and Cloud at six weeks old.

Having lived with such good traveling cats for twenty-odd years, I didn’t even consider the possibility that there were other types out there.

When we took Aang and Cloud to visit my parents for the first time, Aang screamed non-stop. The entire 4+ hours. Cloud joined in occasionally, but was mostly resigned. Aang didn’t just scream. He threw himself against the soft sides of his carrier. He bit it. He pulled at it with his claws. He thrashed like he was dying.

We tried benadryl. We tried covering the carrier with a towel. We tried switching him to Cloud’s carrier. We tried taking him out of the carrier (0/10, do not recommend). I even asked for advice online. Nothing.

We made a longer trip to Peoria to see Dean’s parents for Christmas. We decided to break up the trip with a hotel stay halfway so that we wouldn’t be subject to screaming cat for 8 straight hours.

Guess what? Aang is also terrible in hotel rooms!

On the way up, we put the litter box in the bathroom of the hotel room. This is usually best because it’s out of the way and the tile can be easily swept up. It does, however, necessitate the door to the bathroom remaining open. Aang found that the best acoustics were in the bathtub in the far back corner. He would go back there and just scream his head off. We were worried that people in the neighboring rooms would complain, so we pulled the litter box into the main room, spread towels beneath it and shut the door to the bathroom. There was a hell of a clean up in the morning.

Aang had also chewed a few holes in his carrier, so we decided to switch him and Cloud on the return trip as Cloud’s carrier had stronger mesh.

That trip was a doozy as the devil had entered Cloud as well. He made short work of the mesh that Aang had started on and chewed his way completely out of the carrier. Aang went even more crazy now that Cloud had free reign of the car. Cloud was smart enough to stay away from the front seat so that we weren’t able to easily grab him. At the next gas stop, I grabbed Cloud, the ripped carrier and some dental floss and sewed him back inside.

A few months later, Dean’s mom ran across some hard plastic carriers for sale, got them and shipped them to us. We’d always used the soft ones because they’re airline friendly and they seemed more comfortable. We’ve now had two trips with the hard ones. Aang screamed the entire first trip, as was his custom.

This last trip was actually pleasant.

We drove through some rain and some traffic, but both cats were good and were even sleeping when we pulled up to my parents’ house. When we got them out, they didn’t run around like they were frightened or hide under the bed. They went immediately and checked out their food bowls and began exploring the house like they owned it.

Today they’ve alternated between sleeping in various places, knocking down some of my mom’s potpourri and crawling all over us while we try and work. In other words, they’ve been completely happy and normal.

I don’t want to jinx myself, but I think we may have some future world class travelers on our hands. (Fingers and toes crossed.) Next up: hotel rooms.

Traveling with cats