How to Make Your Cat’s First Hotel Visit a Success

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Are you considering a stay in a pet-friendly hotel with your cat? If this will be your cat’s first hotel visit, we’ve got tips on everything for items you need to pack to keeping your cat calm in a new surrounding.

I’ll be the first to admit that we don’t travel with our cats. When we’re going to be gone overnight, we have a pet sitter take care of our cats in our home so their routine isn’t disrupted.

But sometimes there’s no choice in having that routine disrupted. Last August, Hurricane Harvey was headed toward Texas and this was our forecast:

We’d stayed home for a hurricane in 2010–and came very close to being flooded out with 14 inches of rain. After about three inches of rain, we can no longer leave (driving across our creek is the only way out) so we knew we needed to leave early if there was even a possibility of 15-25 inches. We packed up our cats and dogs and headed to a hotel, joined by many other pet lovers escaping both Corpus Christi and Houston.

This was the first time Inca and Lucky had ever stayed in a hotel. (We hadn’t yet adopted Jetty–she was down in Victoria at that time near the coast; she’d be scooped up from the floodwaters by animal control a few days later and brought to Austin in a rescue transport.)

Whether you find yourself headed to a hotel with your cats due to an evacuation–or a move–here are our tips on how to make your cat’s first hotel stay a successful one!

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Be Prepared

Even if you don’t foresee the need to go to a hotel with your cat, be prepared in case of an emergency.

Have your cat’s microchip number and immunization records on hand (we pack a paper copy and keep a digital version on our phones); in an emergency, you don’t want to have to make a trip to the vet for your cat’s records.

Know pet-friendly hotels both in your vicinity and outside your area, should you need to get out of an evacuation zone. And be sure your cat is flea-free. Hotels (and boarding facilities) request that cats be current on flea preventatives.

Make the Trip to the Hotel a Calm One

Before you load your cat in the carrier, spray the carrier with FELIWAY^® CLASSIC Spray. (Never spray into the carrier when your cat is inside.)

The spray mimics natural feline reassuring messages to help your cat feel calm when he enters the carrier, helping to keep him calm on the journey to the hotel.

Bring the spray with you to spray it not just on your return home but in your hotel room as a quiet refuge for your cat in the room.

Prepare the Hotel Room

While your cat remains in his carrier, prepare the hotel room.

First, do a sweep of the room to make sure it’s cat-friendly. Look for an errant pill, discarded vape cartridge, piece of dental floss–anything that the hotel maid might have missed but your cat is sure to find.

Make sure there’s nowhere for your cat to escape! Check baseboards, behind furniture, and around windows.

Set up your cat’s litter box in a corner of the bathroom or bring a large pop-up crate for litterboxes; it will provide some privacy and also prevent litter from being kicked around the room.

In another area, set up the food and water bowls.

To help keep your cat safely in the room, immediately put out the Do Not Disturb sign (to prevent knocking on your door), and lock your door. You don’t want an unexpected maid check.

Plug In a Diffuser

Plug in a FELIWAY^® CLASSIC Diffuser (one diffuser covers an area of about 700 square feet–larger than a hotel room) to comfort your cat.

You won’t smell it, and it has no effect on you but this clinically proven solution may help decrease your cat’s urine spraying, scratching or hiding–all so important during a hotel stay.

Introduce Your Cat to the Room

Open your cat’s carrier and let him come out when he’s ready to explore the room.

We kept the television on to help drown out the sounds in the hotel hallway as Lucky and Inca checked out their new home away from home.

We also made our plan for entering and exiting the room (not only to grab food downstairs but to walk the dogs multiple times a day).

One of us moved the cats to the far side of the room with each exit while the other one left. We never left the pets unattended in the room.

Offer a Safe Retreat

In the expansiveness of a strange hotel room, your cat might prefer a smaller space to feel secure and safe. Leave your cat’s carrier open and accessible, with a favorite toy inside.

During our hotel stay, Lucky and Inca spent much of the first day beneath the hotel chair–but Lucky soon decided it would be more fun in the chair itself!

Keep the Peace

We’re so fortunate that our cats and dogs all get along–but, with the stress of a hotel stay, your own stress, a confined space, and the barometric changes from incoming storms, tempers can flare.

If your hotel room is being shared by multiple cats, FELIWAY^®MultiCat Diffuser can help reduce tension and conflict between cats. If you’re also traveling with dogs, you’ll also want to plug in the ADAPTIL^® Calm Home Diffuser which copies the natural, canine-appeasing pheromone that dogs have known since birth. (See our post on DogTipper about making your dog’s first hotel stay a success for more tips.)

You can use both the cat and dog diffusers in the same room; the cat diffusers don’t impact your dog (or you), and the dog diffuser has no effect on cats or humans.

Stay on a Schedule

Whether you’re at the hotel due to a move, evacuation or other reason, it’s always tough to stay on schedule while traveling–but it’s important for our pets.

Try to keep meal time much the same as your cat would enjoy at home, as well as bedtime.

Keep Scratching in Its Place

Scratching is a natural part of your cat’s life and a great way to relieve stress–but you definitely don’t want that scratch to occur on hotel furniture.

Bring a favorite scratcher from home and help redirect the scratching onto the scratcher.

Keep Calm and Try to Have Fun

If you’re at the hotel for an evacuation or a move, it’s hard to avoid being stressed–but handling our own stress is step one in helping our cats remain stress-free.

Take time to play with your cat, whether with a wand toy or a loose shoe string (Lucky’s all-time favorite!)

Not only will your cat have a better time but you, too, will find that your own hotel stay is much improved!