My oldest cat seems to like car rides, as long as she sits on the driver’s lap so she can feel the shift of the leg from gas to brake & the turn of the steering wheel, to get advance notice of speed & direction changes.
My other three cats’ opinions range from ‘hate it’ to ‘YYYYYYYOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWLLLLLLLLLL’.
I had a cat that LOVED car rides. All I’d have to do is jingle the car keys and Sophie would be sitting on the hood.
Over the last 25 years, I’ve had quite a few cats (we have six at the moment), and most of them have had at least a couple of rides in the car. Most have been terrified (plenty of the yowling and shedding others have mentioned). Even the ones who didn’t scream have still hidden under the seat or tried to cuddle and bury their faces in my arm.
Between my parents, my sister and I we have had a fair number of cats over the years and every single one hated car rides with a passion. You haven’t heard yowling until you’ve heard a Siamese cat in a car. One theory is that, besides the panic of being in a strange and enclosed place, is that most cats have an exquisite sense of balance, with the result that riding in a car makes them feel sick.
I had one years ago that loved to sit on the passenger side dashboard and watch everything pass by. He seemed to most enjoy going with me when I took my son to soccer practice. He’d sit on my lap the whole time at the field, and never once tried to run off. Strange, and I’m not sure how that tradition got started…I can’t imagine what ever would have posessed me to find out if he’d behave himself outdoors.
None of the cats I have now seem to like much of anything, except sleeping.
My kitty loves going for rides in my van. She likes to stand on my lap with her front paws on the window edge so that she can see out the window. When she is tired of that she will sit on the carpet next to me. I should also add that when we leave the house she wears a harness / leash, making sitting on my lap easy.
Many years ago I adopted a kitten who liked to ride in the car perched on the back of my neck between myself and the headrest. He also liked looking out the window. He would sort of have two paws on one side of my neck, two on the other. Like a stole. Was quite cute, but as he grew it sort of posed a problem.
The bigger and heavier he became the further down my back he would slide. Eventually this arrangement became impossible. It was a bit difficult to be hunched directly over the wheel with my cat behind me and still be able to control the vehicle.
My first cat loved riding in the car as much as any dog, although she did not stick her head out the window. She draped herself over the dashboard so she could see out. When I had a Corvair there was no dashboard so she had to content herself with looking out the back window, but she really preferred a dashboard.
We took her a lot of places besides the vet–over to my grandmother’s for dinner on Sunday, over to a friend’s house, or just riding around. She was always ready to go.
All the many other cats I’ve had since then have wanted nothing to do with car rides.
In general they hate riding in cars.
But my last pair survived an 8-hour drive from NYC to Cleveland (no food or water), without too many complaints.
Most of the cats that I have had were fairly indifferent. I’ve had a couple who hated it, most didn’t care.
But I had two that just absolutely loved to ride in the car. One would get up on the back deck and look out at the car in back of them, the other would ride on the dashboard looking forward. At some pre-arranged signal (between them), they would do the feline equivalent of a Chinese fire drill and swap places. They absolutely adored going to the Dairy Queen because I’d get a big bowl of the soft ice cream and put it on the floor of the back seat and they would chow down contentedly.
The funniest thing about those two little shits was that they would go crazy to get in the car. As soon as I opened the driver’s door, zoom - in they went. But when we got back home, they would not get out until I walked around and opened the passenger door for them.
I miss them.