Now, Princess really seems to love traveling. I’ve had cats before who have yowled from the minute they got inside a car until the minute they were out again, but for the most part she’s content. I’ve also found that generally she’s a little easier to travel with than the dogs. She doesn’t smell when she’s been out in the rain, she’s not about to bark at passing cars (and there are a lot of those), and she’s fastidious enough that she doesn’t mistake her cage for a toilet. However, dog friendly parks are not cat friendly parks. Princess is very tolerant of Fifi and Samson, sometimes she even seems rather fond of them, in her cat-like way, but she does not like other dogs. AT ALL! The other thing, even when you can let your dogs go leash free, cats are another matter. I know Princess well enough to know that she’d be up the nearest tree before I’d even put her leash away if I took it off her.

Fortunately, Princess is getting used to a leash. A little bit. In other words, she doesn’t go nuts when it’s placed on her any more. But she’s still a little reluctant to let a human walk her. She is, after all, a cat, and cats (especially purebred Chartreux) have a great deal of dignity, which is completely spoiled by the concept of the leash. The other thing I’ve found is that she’s very reluctant to perform her necessary toiletries while leashed. In a hotel room it’s not so bad, as she’ll use a kitty litter tray without a fuss, but out in public while being leashed…it doesn’t bear contemplating!

Initially, of course, this was quite a problem, but we solved it…It wasn’t easy mind you! I found that if we cleared a space in the back of the wagon (necessitating removing all the luggage…) we could put her litter tray there and she’d use it! It’s a hassle, but I think Princess appreciates it (as much as a cat can appreciate the lengths her humans will go to for her).

Well, after all the hassles of traveling for a day (quite an abbreviated day’s travel I might add. Ideally we’d like to have done the 1000 mile trip in a maximum of two days, but with the pets it’s a bit harder. We decided to break it up into four trips instead. In a way, it’s been much more pleasant, as we’ve had time to see the sites and smell the roses. However, I’ve found that even in the most pet friendly hotels we’ve had problems.

The biggest issue really has been that in the hotels we booked into, it is against hotel policy to leave animals unattended in the rooms. Now, my three darlings are quite used to being left alone in our house. And even though the hotel room is much smaller, I wouldn’t think an hour would be a problem. However, for the hotel staff it is. This, unfortunately, leads to issues for Jim and I when we want something as simple as a meal in a nice restaurant. Personally, I’ve been to pet friendly restaurants, and some are great (although Princess is usually kept confined by the quantity of strange dogs present), but most pet friendly diners aren’t exactly “romantic”, for want of a better word. Sometimes Jim and I like to treat ourselves, especially when we’re traveling. For this reason, I soon found it very inhibiting that we couldn’t leave the pets in the room, even for a short period of time.

This means – pet sitting. Unfortunately, before the trip we didn’t think to plan this ahead, which meant several nights of eating takeout in the hotel room (or in the park when the weather was fine) because we couldn’t leave the pets to go anywhere else! This may be something to consider for the return journey… Fortunately, I phoned ahead to our destination (a lovely pet friendly resort where the staff were only too happy to give me assistance) and discovered that they can easily organize pet sitting for us!