Moving house

Hi all,

I'm moving house on Saturday, the new place is about 1 hour away. It is a 3 bed house with a garden, so there will be plenty of space for her

Villy is a nervous cat at the best of times, so what can I do for her to make the move less stressfull?

I have a feliway plug in for her, and will continue to use that at the new house.

How long should I keep her in for? She is an indoor/outdoor cat at the moment.

Congrats on the new place!

It all depends on how quickly Villy adjusts to the move and how quickly you unpack your new home. Once you have everything unpacked and put away, then leave it in 3-4 more days to help her adjust then you probably can unplug it. If she's still nervous though, I would leave it in a couple of more days...or until it runs out.

When you and your kitty arrive at your new home, be sure to keep her in just one room for the first several days that she's there. When we moved, my cats showed me they were read to explore the rest of the place by reaching their paws under the door when we were not in the room with them. It will be less overwhelming for her to be introduced to a smaller unfamiliar place - just one room - than to be let loose in a big house. Congrats on the new house by the way.

Congrats on your new house!

I agree with the idea of keeping your kitty in one room at first. We moved our cats more than a thousand miles away about a year ago (let me tell you what a fun car ride that was). We lived in an apartment for about six months while we waited for our house to be built. The cats adjusted pretty well to the apartment, but seemed to think what? one bedroom and one living room for two people and four cats? where's the rest of the place?. The found our bed pretty quickly and hid under there for the first few days and then started exploring when they decided they were starving and wanted to find out what all the weird noises were. When we moved to the house, we introduced them to the bedroom first, so they would have their precious bed to sleep on and under. Rather than keep them in just that one room, though they kept themselves there for awhile, we closed off most of the rooms of the house and just let them explore the hallways/kitchen/bedroom for the first week or so, then slowly opened things up. I think it helped them that this gave us time to unpack a bit, so once they could get into the other rooms there were things they were familiar with.