americats.express

So, is this what's like in your house? Getting Chaussettes in to her carrier is an act of subterfuge and luck, but not always. They are so rarely in their carriers they don't associate them with vet visits. We've often been asked how we cope with vet visits. It's really simple. We ask locals for recommendations. We check out the local humane society. If they do pet vaccines, check ups etc we prefer to go to the human society, we always take a donation of a big bag of cat food and pay their fee as well. Humane societies do wonderful (and often heart breaking work) and we try to support them all the time. We keep all vet, inoculation papers for each cat in a file and take the whole thing with us every time. It's much easier than trying to remember dates etc. We also keep them because they're traveling cats and we could be asked for proof of their rabies or other inoculations at any time. We never have been, but we are prepared.  When we get to a new place, one...

There's nothing like taking a leisurely stroll with your pet - it might be slightly unusual when that pet is a cat, but you see more and more of it. Now, some cats adjust to walking on a lead without problems. Geordie loves it and gets very antsy if she's not out inspecting her territory by 10:30 .am. each day! If the surroundings are friendly, she joins us for long walks. She's done over a mile easily at some spots.  Chaussettes on the other hand will have nothing to do with a harness and a lead. She has no desire to venture out. We don't force them. Geordie does and Chaussettes doesn't. And thats is that! Geordie has been anxious when she gets near running water in the past. But this year we took more strolls near rivers and slowly her confidence grew. We let her take her time, and now she actually goes right up to the water. If it's not running too fast or there's a pool she wades in. It's cool to see her investigating everything.  Just remember...

Just another roundup of our fabulous travels in 2018.... can't wait to see where we go this year! Travel safe & Have fun

We visited magnificent National Parks, stayed in tranquil spots, met great folks... we think we've seen more states than many people and we feel very privileged. How many cats can say that I wonder? Here's the first of  a few of our favourite times and places ..  Travel safe & have fun!

The question we get asked the most is, without a doubt, “How long did it take to train her on a lead? Why didn't you train both cats to walk on a lead?” We don't think we trained her, she wanted to try it and so it worked. Geordie was approximately 4-5 months old when she arrived on our doorstep. A couple of months later we went up to North Carolina stay at a dear friends 'cabin in the woods.' In Georgia we lived in a loft and Geordie had no chance to be outside. We were keen to let her enjoy the fabulous garden and the peace of the surroundings in N.C....the house was on a couple of hundred acres and the most noise was the bubbling brook running below the house. Before we went up there, we put a harness on her in the loft every couple of days and let her get used to it. Once up at the house in N.C., we put the harness on her for 2 days straight inside, on the third day Lee carried her outside, sat on a stump in the garden and put her on his lap. We waited. S...

Cats are fine travellers. A lot of people doubt it and we hear, “Moving a cat is difficult,” quite a bit. But we've known a number of travelling cats around the world...for instance, many sailboats have cats on board, the history of cats and ships goes back through the ages. We've moved cats between homes, temporarily housed cats on our sailboat in the Mediterean and now full time RV with our two. T here are loads of cats tootling around the country and the world in vans, RV's and boats. Over the next few weeks we'll answer the questions we get all the time. People react when they see Geordie walking on a lead, and while we are by no means unique with this.....we'll just talk about how we do it. To be clear, this is not a “how to” blog, it's just a “how we do it” blog! Here's some of the usual suspect list of questions: How long did it take to train her on a lead? Why didn't you train both cats to walk on a lead? Where do you keep th...

A couple of days after Chaussettes arrived to live with us .. 7 years later she still has the rubber duck! We moved to Delaware in 2011. One week after we arrived, we got home from the Farmer's Market with this tiny 1lb tuxedo kitten with 4 white paws. I don't know who was more surprised, Geordie or us. Chaussettes was found in a barn with her two much bigger brothers, their father was clearly a Maine Coon cat. She was food deprived but fiesty. She's made up for it since and now weighs nearly 17 lbs. We spent a lot of time at the vet with her at first, she was very ill. She has feline herpes, a upper respiratory disease, and she has to take L-Lysine for the rest of her life. She's always been afraid of going outside, I think it's because her sense of smell isn't good and she knows she is at a disadvantage. She's not a lap cat, she cuddles up to me after dinner but just with her head on my lap.Lee has togive her an ear rub every day. He is without ...

  This photo is a couple of days after she arrived,  I had my art gallery in Georgia and she slipped into the role of gallery greeter without missing a beat.  Geordie, about 4-5 months old, a flea ridden stray with attitude and a big mouth arrived on our doorstep in 2010 when we lived in a small town in the state of Georgia. Here's the story behind her name. My sister in South Africa had a character German Shepard named Geordie who loved cats. The day she died my sister called us, we all had a cry and I said we'd have a toast to the lovely girl that evening on our "New Orleans" style balcony in this small downtown area where we rarely saw any animals. We toasted her passage over the rainbow bridge, then stared in amazement as this skinny wee kitten came trotting up our stairs, meowing her heart out. She's not stopped talking since. I picked her up and said, "Geordie must have sent you!" Two weeks later my sister found C.D. (Cheerful Dog) abandoned ...

Chaussettes & Geordie pose in the RV Welcome to our traveling cats blog ...Geordie (the calico) and Chaussettes (the tuxedo) travel the USA in an RV.. follow their adventures and advice on traveling with cats. We hope you'll enjoy the ride. Geordie walks on a lead and loves to explore each new campsite Geordie explores the trails at Villaneuva State Park, New Mexico Chaussettes does not go outside. Her sense of smell is not up to par, so she's elected to stay happily safely inside and watches birds from the inside or does some heavy duty snoozing. We did try to get a harness on her once or twice but it did not end well...for us! 😼 Chaussettes likes to hang out on the scratcher So, follow us and we'll see where this goes... we've been on the road for 2 years and have learned a lot about traveling with cats! And we all still love each other...