Airplane travel with a cat

Has anyone every taken their cat on a plane? I am thinking that someday, my kitty might have to get used to air travel. In 10 years we will be retired and will travel to our vacation home (1200 miles away) for extended stays (3-4 months) and he will have to come with. We may even try taking him for shorter trips (2 weeks) before that.

If you have air traveled with kitty, what kind of carrier did you use? Do you put food or water in the carrier? What if, God forbid, the cat pees in there or poops??? Our flight is only 2 1/2 hours but with checking in and security the drive it ends up being about 5-6 hours that he would be in there. Another fear -- what if the flight is delayed???

When my husband and I moved back to NJ from Texas we flew. we had to buy special carries that would fit under the seats in front of us.I believe we got them from petsmart. As for water and food I did my last feeding at midnite the night before cause our flight was leaving at 7 am I had put two empty bird dishes on the side and once we where up in the air i gave them some bottle water and food they didn't eat as for peeing a popping put a towel on the bottome worse case they will need a bath when you get settled. I'll have to find the carriers again to find out what the are called

If you call your local airlines (or the one you would probably use to travel) they can give you their website with all the information plus that you would need to know. That's what I did when I shipped a kitty to California. I would have preferred to take her in the cabin with me, but I wasn't going with her.

The airlines will tell you what vaccinations you'll need to be up to date on, type of carrier, cost, etc.

This thread might be useful.

http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=102335

Cheers, from
SwampWitch