That is, handle a move into a new house or home. My mom is convinced that cats get very anxious in new digs and end up peeing over everything. I may be moving in a year or so and likely will bring the very mellow black stray that has adopted us as an (mostly) outdoor cat. What’s your experience with your furry feline friends?
Mostly, they hide under the couch for a few days. No one “peed everywhere”.
I’ve moved with cats plenty of times. I set up the new home as completely as I can before bringing the cat to the new space. When I open the carrier and drag out the cat, I set him/her in the litter box so the cat knows where it is and then they start exploring in that nervous slinky way with their bellies close to the ground. Then they hide under the couch, but explore in little bits when no one is around.
The only time a cat peed outside o the box due to a move was when Lenny was finally feeling confident enough to walk around a new place, and the air brakes of a passing bus made a really sudden and very loud PSHT! sound, and he tinkled just a bit.
Never had an outdoor cat, so I don’t know how they explore to new neighborhood.
I have moved with cats many times without any litterbox issues that I remember.
I take my vet’s advice that outdoor cats have much shorter lifespans pretty seriously, so haven’t had an outdoor cat for many years. But we did have outdoor cats growing up, and one did disappear after a move. IMHO that is a much more likely concern than major litter issues.
I love watching cats explore a new house–the way they get curious and sniff and tiptoe is just delightful. So take some time to enjoy that with your cat. And set up his litterbox first thing in the new house, in a low-traffic area since there will be lots of chaos.
In my experience, indoor cats can be moved quite easily. Outdoor ones… not so much.
Indoor cats are easy, because they are confined to the space you allow them to have (your whole house!) and the same remains true once you’ve moved them. They’ll see the same furniture, smell the same smells, but there will be new things. They might be skittish for a bit, but the worst, most scaredy-cat cat I ever knew got used to the new place in about a week to a week and a half.
What makes it harder about moving with outdoor cats is that you can’t bring “their” outdoors with them! They have their hiding places, their scratching trees, their flower-bed litter boxes, and, generally, a route that they take every day to survey “their” kingdom, which they know how to get around in based on sights, sounds and smells. Moving to a new neighbourhood means all those paths/places/smells/etc are gone, and they can get confused and lost. It also means a new pecking order has to be established - cats are territorial, and if your neighbours have outdoor cats too, there will be fights! If you don’t actually change neighbourhoods, then cats are likely to return “home” to their old home, at least for a while.
That said, it can be done. Start with leash training the cat around your new place - take them out a few times of day to sniff the doorways, balconies, trees, and everything else in your yard to help them know that this is their space. The second time you do this, they will even smell themselves there, which will put them at east. This can take anywhere from a few tries to a few weeks, and I have no clue if there’s any reason to go one way or the other on the amount of time you spend doing this. Give them treats when you come back in, and they will associate the new place with “home” and “food”, which is what you want. I know this has worked for some people. It did not work for my first cat, who promptly ran away the first time he was let out alone 
Alternatively (and these boards being what they are, I know it will get said sooner or later!) moving is actually a good time to turn outdoor cats to indoor ones, since everything will be new to them. It’s also safer for them (cars, disease, etc).
I have never had a cat pee all over everything when we moved them.
I’ve moved a LOT with my cats & they have always settled relatively quickly. (It got to the point where they’d start getting excited and tear around the house when they saw me bringing the boxes out of storage.)
Just make sure that the cat is in a safe place when moving stuff in or out so they don’t get spooked by the noise and take off. I’d lock my critters in the bathroom with food, water & litter. I also tried to take them in a separate trip so they had all my attention when I brought them in to the new place. Once they saw my stuff there, they were fine.
Also, if you decide to let your cat outside at your new digs, make sure you keep him (?) in for a couple of weeks before letting him out. I’d have a collar and up-to-date tag on him as well.
Kitty will do fine.
The only outdoor cat I’ve ever moved went over pretty well. We kept Ursus mostly indoors for a couple weeks before the move, letting him out occasionally. he didn’t like that so much, but then after the move he was more accustomed to being kept inside for awhile. After letting him run around the house all antsy and whatnot for a couple weeks we started letting him out. He was fine after a couple weeks
We had about as traumatic a year as you can have for kitties with no health issues. Our house was on the market for nine months with lots of showings and open houses so lots of strangers tromping in and out. Then we stuck them in a car for three days as we drove to Boston and moved into a tiny apartment. Then two months later we moved into the place we bought.
One cat had one issue with peeing one time ( I really think he was telling us HELL NO I am not going in the car for another three day trip). Other than that, everything was just fine.
I’ve moved three times in the past three years with The Incredible Bartman. I don’t know if he’s just a really mellow guy, but he’s usually fine in about 15 minutes or so. The routine usually has been such:
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Secure kitty in packed up and emptied room in place being vacated, with cat carrier, food, water, litter box, and something that smells like me. Preferably a quiet room away from most moving activity.
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Move everything to new place.
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Move kitty absolutely last. I didn’t want to lock him up somewhere in the new place, or leave him alone. I show him the litter box first, so he knows where it is. He sees all his familiar stuff, has a snack, sniffs around a bit, and has a snooze.
No trauma peeing yet, thank god. He really is a good boy.
Our two cats have moved a couple of times, and they had two different reactions to it (no litter box issues for either, though). My cat jumped out of her carrier and was at ease immediately. Jim’s cat hid behind the furnace for a couple of days.
We moved our two cats twice in two years. I agree with the posters who said to set up a low-traffic area that can be locked up for the cat. A bathroom is fine. Make sure he has an hiding place there, even if it is just an upside down cardboard moving box with an old blankie under it. My three cats hid under the bath for two days, then started on ever wideing exploring trips. Their first trip, at night, was to the bedroom next to the batroom, to join us in bed. (Aw!!)
One more tip: if you move to an apartment higher then the first floor, make especially sure that your cat has a way up when he falls out of a window. They are more likely to fall out of unfamiliar window-sills and balcony railings, and the combined effort of finding a way up again, and a new house can be too big to overcome, making your cats unintended strays.
Our cat got lost that way shortly after the move, and we had to borrow a cat-trap and climb over a friendly neighbour’s fence to set the trap and retrieve him.
Get one of these for about every other room of the new place:
It’s a (synthetic) pheremone diffuser; you need to replace them about once a month, and they aren’t excessively cheap, but the they’re the closest thing I’ve ever seen to cat behaviour magic.
After a move, ours went from fighting/hissing/destruction to (for cats) perfectly behaved and friendly with each other in about an hour after plugging these in. We can tell when the diffuser runs out because the hissing starts again.
There are a bunch of brands of the dispensers, “Feliway” seems to be the only brand of the stuff itself.
If the reviews of that product of you and Amazon are the real thing, that product is a goddamn miracle. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I have ordered two to gift to my local cat shelter, and I can’t wait to see what effect it will have there.
This is scary. One of the 168 reviews on Amazon said:
Imagine such a product applied to people. Fascinating.
Our current cat, likewise a mostly outdoor stray who adopted us, did amazingly well on the move across country last year. (5 days/nights of driving 12 hrs a day in a carrier)
She went through a few episodes of desperate meowing, through which we comforted her both verbally and, when possible, physically, but all nights save one, she was able to get out and roam around a motel room (one night, we were forced to stay in the only available room in a higher-end hotel and could not sneak her in, so she spent the night in the back of the pickup truck in the carrier). She explored the room, used her litter box, and ended up sleeping on the bed with us. She didn’t seem any more stressed than any of us humans.
In her new digs, she did fine, except for not wanting to go outside for a while. Naturally, it was intimidating. But she comes and goes like always now (a little more than a year later, and it only took her a few mths to get over her phobia of going out) and nothing in her behavior has changed (she is still as annoying as ever:D)
But I recall that when I was a kid, my mom got drugs from the vet to sedate our 2 cats for the (much shorter) move. That is one option, but our current kitty didn’t seem to need it.
P.S. All my cats have been indoor/outdoor, and the last one lived in perfect health to age 16 or so. This one is about 8 yrs old and going strong. I must be doing something wrong…I send them out over and over again, but they keep coming back! (just kidding, sort of:)
Just me, but I would never have an “indoor only” cat. I know the dogma (no pun intended, lol) surrounding that, but all mine have loved going out so much, I couldn’t imagine confining one to indoors only (though I suppose if they were born to it and never saw the outside, they would be fine with it…none of mine have been, most having come to me as strays)
My cats have moved 4 times, with no problems whatsoever. Lots of sniffing around and exploring the new place at first, but nothing out of the ordinary. I have very laid-back cats though.
My late tom Shadow, an extremely mellow, friendly outdoor cat, handled several moves just fine. After checking out the new indoor premises he’d insist on getting out, disappear and come back after an hour or two for some grub. He never was out overnight and never came back sick or injured, only to succumb to cancer at age 13.
Phoebe, my little tabby, lived to be 21 years old. We moved a total of 8 times while I had her, so she was a good little mover. She never peed on anything- I had a little routine I would go through with her when we moved into a new place. I would take her to the litter box several times from every room in the house, carrying her close to the ground, so she’d know how to get to it from anywhere.
As a weird little aside- when my husband and I got married, Phoebe and I moved in with him and his cat, Midnight. Phoebe had never lived with another cat before, and she was not a happy camper for the first few weeks. Midnight was a very sweet, easygoing cat, and he tried to make friends with Phoebe. It was obvious that he was the dominant cat, though. When we moved into the house we live in now, Phoebe took it in stride and adjusted immediately. Midnight had only lived in one place for the 11 years he’d been alive- he did not handle the move well. No peeing incidents- I did the litter-box-from-every-room thing with him- but he was really freaked out for a few weeks. Phoebe suddenly became the dominant cat. I’m convinced it was because she handled the move so much better than he did.
Make sure they’re contained in a cat carrier or such until inside the new house. I’ve seen cats jump out a car window within half a block of the new destination, & disappear forever.
Before my parents got a cat, my kitty and I used to go for visits for the weekend occasionally. He never had any problem adjusting to their house. I didn’t even need to show him where his litterbox was, he just smelled his way there (I assume).
My two moved well, with one notable exception: Eddie was terrified of the ceiling fans. We hadn’t any in the house he’d lived in his whole life, so this was a new thing for him. He hid under the bed for several days, and when he finally came out he would only get to explore a few feet away from the bed before he caught sight of the giant bug suspended over his head, and then he’d dart back under.
After a few weeks of acclimation, we started turning the fans on. Back under the bed he went.