Final Prep Trip
My move is coming up soon, and as of a few weeks ago I hadn’t yet driven the cats in the RV more than a few minutes, nor parked with them more than a few hours at a time.
In all my research about taking cats and dogs in the RV with you, nobody really talks about how to acclimate them, nor the initial disasters when you first throw them into the RV and drive them. I learned a number of lessons the hard way.
Before I begin, I consider these first two pet trips a success. I made it. No major disasters. Some minor cat claw induced damage. Lots of meowing. But everyone lived.
Note about the cats: Spot is car trained. He cares about 2 things – if he’s close enough to get a scratch on the head now and then, and if there’s a litter box nearby. So I did what I usually do and tethered him to the passenger seat: close enough to be in head-scratch distance, far enough away to keep him off my gas pedals. Salem, on the other hand, is a ninja and howls nonstop. To the point of being a nuisance. And forget the soft cat carrier, she’ll get out of it. So I thought I was super smart: I chucked Salem in the bathroom so she could howl her heart out and not go apeshit while I drove. On the way back from the first trip, I dispensed with the bathroom and tethered her near the couch, and she just sat there quietly.
As noted before, my first drive with both cats was very conservative. I stayed at a resort 2 miles from my house. I drove the RV around town with the cats for about 20 minutes for good measure, however, it was all low speed and I was able to pull over and make adjustments as I went. Spot got a little fidgety, but just rested next to me, and Jack hogged the passenger seat.
Overall, 30 minutes of 25mph driving and being able to pull over to adjust straps and leashes was no big deal. All 4 of us survived. That was easy. So easy I figured the next trip would be a breeze. I was wrong.
For the second trip, I wanted it to be an experience far from home and multiple nights, with a switch between RV sites. I booked a reservation in Verdi, NV (about an hour from here) and planned to arrive around 2:00 PM on Friday afternoon. I wanted to maximize the trip, so I took time off work and scheduled a lot of driving (my goal was to spend 3 hours driving with stops, totaling up to 5 hours being mobile. Most of my goal was to prove to myself I could handle multiple days on the road, the rest was to assure the long-distance cat travel would be ok.
I set up as I did before: Spot tethered nearby, Jack tethered to the passenger seat. Salem tethered near the couch, but close to Spot. That lasted all of 3 blocks. I still don’t know how but Salem managed to stretch her leash, hop up behind my seat, and wrap herself around my head. I pulled over and re-assessed the situation. I moved her to the bed (with a tighter harness and tether), then carried on.
That worked for about the next 30 minutes of driving.
Salem busted out of her harness, so I had to pull over and chuck her in the bathroom since I didn’t trust the soft carrier to hold her. She Houdini’d her way out of it in 10 minutes last time. Once I did that, things settled a bit, until I was almost in Reno. At that point, Spot got disgusted sitting on the floor next to my seat and decided he HAD to sit on the passenger seat. Where Jack was sitting. So he forced his way in and happily shared that seat with Jack for about 5 minutes. And then Jack moved. And all hell broke loose. Hissing, yowling, and yelping. So I had to pull over again and separate them. And while all of this was going on, Salem was in the bathroom howling like she was dying.
It was not a pleasant trip.
We did eventually land, and once the RV was stopped everyone was just fine. The aftermath was not great. I had a fresh set of cat scratches on the passenger seat from Spot’s territory grab, and Salem managed to grab onto the screen in the bathroom and punch a small hole in it.
I’ve given up on trying to keep Salem penned anywhere non-destructive, so I bought a dog kennel for her to travel in. I’ll set that by the kitchen sink and just let her raise hell in it. Spot’s tether is now much shorter, and he gets to camp underneath the dining table, far out of reach of the passenger seat.
I suppose the entire TL;DR of this is Salem hates traveling. Spot kinda hates it. Jack is a mess if he thinks I’m leaving him alone in the RV. Once the RV stops everybody is just fine. It’s stressful but lesser so now that I gave it a solid 2 trips of run through. I think we’ll live.
