Surely you don’t take a cat on holiday?!

[mnahmnah]

I’m sat in departures at the airport and a woman has an actual car in a carry case.

1. why would you want to take your cat on holiday?!
2. how do the practicalities work when you get there with the cat - does it stay in the hotel room?!
3. the cat is meaowing constantly. It can’t be happy?!
4. what about fellow passengers who have cat allergies?!

We flew home from Ibiza 3 weeks ago and there was a man with 2 x chihuahuas in the airport and then a lady with the tiniest chihuahua I had ever seen in a little carry case. It was very old, blind and had no teeth, I instantly fell in love with it 😆.
She told me that they are classed as hand luggage on two different flight operators in Spain!

twitter.com/romancecomicbks/status/1473839591736188929

Hope the cat wasn't Gavin, about to cause havoc again.

I've been camping in France and seen people with their cats on holiday with them.... They seemed happy enough!
Dh had a cat when he was a child that used to go on holiday to the seaside with them, and happily pottered around the rock pools etc while they were on the beach.

How do you know she is going on holiday to a hotel?

And this, in a nutshell, is why taking a cat on holiday is a very bad idea. I'm with a cat rescue and you wouldn't believe how many cats are permanently lost in caravan parks, at relatives' houses and, worst of all, from motorway service station car parks. If anyone does take a cat away they would need to keep it carefully shut in at all times to avoid it escaping and getting lost. And in a caravan or similar that would be very, very difficult to do.

In this case though you have no idea what the situation is. It's unlikely to be a holiday.

Some cats such as Siamese are very strongly bonded to their people, like dogs. They’re happy wherever they are as long as they’re near their person. Other cats are brought up to travel from the time they’re kittens, and find it completely normal. And then other cats might be terrible travellers, but have to travel because their owners are moving home.
If you have Instagram, take a look at 1Bike1World, with Nala the cat, who loves all sorts of travel, and greatgramsofgary. Gary loves snowboarding. He has little goggles and everything.
Whereas our cat freaks out with a short car journey. It’s all about the cat‘s personality.

I once sat opposite a falcon perched on it's owner's arm! Quite a few of the ME airlines allow falcons in the cabin. In the UAE, on the sign at check in that has all those things listed that you can't take on flights like fireworks, explosives, bottles bigger than 100ml, the Emirates sign lists no birds (except falcons).

edition.cnn.com/travel/article/falcons-planes-middle-east/index.html

How on earth did you ascertain she was going on holiday? People fly for all sorts of reasons.

Yes agree that she was very unlikely to be going on holiday. Or if she was, something like going to a second home for the summer, going to stay with family for an extended period of time. I doubt she was going on an all inclusive to Majorca with her cat!

I’ve taken a cat to a holiday house. We had two cats, over the years, one was happier left at home, with people coming in, the other was like a dog and was happier with us. Not sure I’d have taken her on a plane though. My mum had a cat that wouldn’t eat when she wasn’t there, so in that situation she’d have been better to take it with her.
And as people have said, perhaps she’s moving house or going somewhere for a few months.

I once had a family next to me on the beach in Cornwall with their pet SNAKE! It was just slithering around in the sand near their 'pitch' and every so often one of them would pick it up and drape it round their necks.

On our first proper holiday as a family when I was very young, the people in the next caravan had brought their two Siamese cats with them. They were trained to collar and lead and my sibling and I were delighted to take them for a walk every morning. My aunt's Siamese also walked on a lead.

I have flown with animals when I have been moving to different countries also it may be easier to visit parents and bring your pet than get pet sitters

My DN once took her pet rats home on the train as she was going home for Christmas and so were all her flat mates so there was no one to look after them. It was certainly a talking point.

How very Harry Potter!

I thought you were my DM for a second, she sent me an irate message about her holiday yesterday (they’re away in a camper van) saying the people on the next pitch have brought cats and my DF has been stung by a wasp.

Who takes (3!) cats camping

They can depending where you are travelling to/from. US and many European countries it's quite common. For the UK people fly into Amsterdam and Paris and drive to the UK. It's a lot cheaper than sending your pet in cargo.

I have some dear friends in the US who regularly drive a couple of thousand miles between their two homes and take their 3 cats with them

Apparently it's done using crates, but I think of attempting it with my two house tigers and ... no, it just doesn't compute

Me neither. I thought they had to be in the hold and booked in hours before you fly?

However, having googled it I've found that in the UK KLM, Lufthansa and TUI will all take pets on planes.

Apparently the pet has to weigh less than 8 kilo and be in a carrier under your seat.

So that's a no to having your giant dog strapped in on the seat next to you.

Oh there was a cute video on the BBC yesterday of a guy taking his 3 cats around the world.

It seems they're comfortable and enjoy it, but need to be trained over a long time...don't think you can shove a cat in bag/on a lead and go 'right, we're off on holiday'

No way my cats would be up for it. They both cry in the carrier to the vets 10 mins down the road. We'd have abandoned the trip before we got on the M1.

But a trained cat, probably more comfortable about the whole thing than some dogs I imagine.

Once on a US internal flight from Boston everyone but us had live lobsters in a box under their seat! 🤮😪

Someone I know has recently moved back to the UK from abroad after living there and brought her 2 cats in a specially made cat carrier.

We once had a man from Monaco come to stay in our holiday cottage (in the outer Hebrides!) and he brought his cat with him, put it on a lead every morning and evening and took it for a walk round the garden. It was perfectly happy, but our cat was NOT and spent 5he whole week spraying every tree in the garden. They'd driven from Monaco!

😄 I was on a crowded bus and a man got on with a Styrofoam box of live lobsters which he then dropped and spilled on the floor. Everyone shuffled away very quickly.

I would be really pissed off if there was a cat on a plane near me as both DH & I have bad cat allergies. I always thought there were separate areas for pets to travel in.