Moving house with cats

[Littlepond]

We are in the process o fa trying to move house. The house we’ve made an offer on is a run down awful shell of a place but an absolute bargain even for its condition and we are excited by the project. However I’m starting to worry about my 3 cats...

When we move we will need to be doing work immediately, windows, doors, floors. What happens to my kitty cats while all this goes on? I understand they need to stay in for 2-3 weeks after moving, we are likely to start renovations in this time.

They are part of the family and we have to do what’s right for them as well as us but I don’t want to not take on a project which will hopefully be our dream house because the cats might find it difficult!

Would they be ok shut in one room while the windows and doors are being replaced? If we let them out in the evening? We are at work all day they are used to coming and going as they please.

The new house is less than half a mile from our current one - will they just try and come back here? Will the new owners hate us because our cats keep trying to come home?

I’m so worried about the cats in all of this!!

How skittish are they around noise - do they hide from the hoover, etc? Because the combination of a new house and a lot of noise may well be a bit much for them - could you afford a cattery for a few weeks? There are some lovely ones, but they're not cheap. Or could you stall on the renovations until you've kept them in a for a few weeks and are sure that they think of the new house as home?

We out ours in a cattery for a few days then kept them in for a week and all was fine.

Each time I've moved I only kept my cats in for a few days. They were going mad and I just hated doing it to them.
In all honesty mine would struggle being in one room all day with each other but that's because they are both boys and hate each other but if yours get on it should be fine.
Just keep the dreamies flowing and I'm sure they'll be fine!

They are not bothered by noise at all, they are all rescues but we’ve had them since kittens so they are used to our noisy house!

We had planned to use a cattery for a few days while we moved but I’d be reluctant to keep them there much longer than that I think.

My concern with letting them out too soon is they’ll just run back to our old house!

Thanks for the replies 🙂

We've moved recently. The three cats went first, before all the furniture, so we could have doors and windows open while we emptied and cleaned the old house. I set up one room in the new house just for them, plenty of hiding places, covered carriers, litter trays, their beds and scratching boxes, toys, everything. Cracked the window slightly and put their raised platform beneath so they could see out, as there is no windowsill. No furniture to start with. We put them straight in there and left them to settle while we were busy, checked them every few hours. That evening we let them out to explore the house, but if we couldn't due to building works I would just have gone in and spent a few hours with them and a book or laptop with TV shows or something.

They were grumpy for about a week after moving, squabbling and running around when we moved, but they have since settled and are much happier than they were in the old house (old house was mouldy so we're attributing it to that). We've been in about a month now and started letting them out this week. The youngest didn't go out in our old house so we've been taking her out on a cat lead for the last two weeks to get used to outdoors, and in the last few days she's been going out supervised without it. The older two went out before we had a problem with our old neighbour, so we kept them in a bit longer, but they've been allowed out this week, again supervised and we bring them back in when we come in. They haven't wanted to leave the garden yet, but they can when they want to. Will probably start letting them out unsupervised next weekend. We found leaving the back door open when we were outside was helpful because if there was a loud noise they ran for the house, which has got them used to seeing the house as a safe place.