Voice of Travel

A few months ago I was very fortunate enough to get a cat. Halley (yes, named after the comet) is a great cat, and I’m thrilled to have her. But…we love to travel. So the question becomes, what do you do with your cat while you go on vacation?

Before getting a cat, I had always assumed I’d just leave the cat at home, and have someone come and check on her every other day. They’d give her canned food at that time, as well as clean out the litter box. If I were to go away for a whole week, I’d only need someone to stop by about 2-3 times. That shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Well, that was BEFORE we got Halley. This cat LOVES to eat, and I think would be very, very upset if she only got her canned food every other day. She always has water and dry food out, but she doesn’t really care for the dry food as much.

The second problem is that when she’s bored, she gets into trouble. We have seen it happen ourselves. For the first month she was here, she didn’t even notice that on our coffee table we had a tic-tac-toe board with little pieces on it. One afternoon she was bored, and a half hour after that all the pieces were all over the house.

So I’m not really sure I trust leaving her in the house for a week alone, since someone would only be in the house for a few minutes every other day. Even if it was every day, I’m not sure I trust her.

I could always put her in a kennel, but most of them seem to be for dogs! I found a total of 3 places within a 45 minute drive that I can take her. One is PetSmart. They have a PetsHotel where you can keep your cats or dogs while you go away. While I haven’t visited it yet, it looks like they are kept in cages, and aren’t played with – but are both fed and litter box cleaned daily. It’s only $14.00, so it’s the cheapest option, but I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with that. The other two places just board cats, and one is $26.00 a night (which there is NO way I’ll pay for her to stay…and would you believe it costs extra for them to play with her???) and one which costs $18.00 a night.

I will go visit the 2 lower priced ones, but I’m really confused. What would you do in my situation? Has anyone boarded their cat with good or bad results? Has anyone left their very friendly cat (she is ALWAYS in the same room with us….she even sleeps on my pillow with me!) alone for a week with good results? I’d love to hear any suggestions, as I have no idea what we should do, as this will be an ongoing problem since we love to travel.