[B_and_D]

Our traveling kitty is 16 now, and we just started taking her with us last year. We bought a harness and a leash for her and also a larger, fold-down carry cage (that we didn't use at all this last trip). I thought that she might try to bolt out of the truck or the trailer, but so far (with a one time exception) she doesn't even like to go out of the trailer. She's pretty sedentary, so this doesn't really surprise me. We take her in and out of the trailer with the leash & harness on, and she usually just walks back to the trailer. She seems to know where it is. We took her in and out of the trailer in our yard at home so that she would become familiar with it. I brought along her current vaccination records (the vet bill), and also made up some "lost cat" flyers with a picture just in case. I try to get her to go out of the trailer for fresh air, so I carry her outside and put her down with the harness and leash on once in a while. What's difficult is that she likes to go underneath things (including the trailer) and the leash is too short to permit much of the type of exploration that she seems to prefer.

One evening in Desert Hot Springs we took her outside; she started really sniffing around and wanted to explore much more than usual, and after checking out one particular palm tree she seemed to kind of go crazy. She tried to get away from me, and was scratching at and fighting the leash. This is really out of character for her but I guess it just goes to show that pets can be unpredictable.

I've seen people with fold-down metal enclosures for their dogs, but I don't know what people with cats would use. Maybe one of those enclosures would work with something over the top, maybe some tensor-type fencing material? We tried a screen room with stakes all around, but it didn't work, too many gaps around the bottom. We even added a bunch of grommets and extra stakes.

She seems to like her "hole" that we made for her under the dinette seat next to the heater. The heater doesn't bother her. She spent a lot of time curled up inside there. We'd look around and ask each other where the cat was, and then we'd say "Kitty in the hole!" if that's where she was.