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Meet the Pack

Three rescues. One RV. A lot of opinions about where everybody sits.

May and Steve are cats. Jasper is a lab mix. Every one of them came from a shelter, and every one of them travels with us, with varying degrees of enthusiasm about it. Everything below comes from actually doing it, including the parts we got wrong.

May, a black cat, resting on a carpeted cat perch in front of cream curtains
May settled in a soft bed, her collar tag engraved with her name clearly visible
May, a black cat, lying on a brightly coloured welcome mat in front of dark kitchen cabinets

May

May is about twelve. I have had her since she was five, from Worcester Animal Rescue League.

She is not a fan of travel. She comes anyway, and she has made her peace with it, as long as I am there. At home she has her spots, and she knows exactly which ones are hers.

Over the past year she has gone partially blind. She does not move around the way she used to, but she has lost none of her appetite for attention, and she still gets all of it.

Jasper

He is seven, a lab mix, and he came to us through Northeast Animal Shelter. Before that he was in Georgia, where he and his sibling were found in a ditch. His sibling was adopted by another family. We got him.

Jasper travels in the RV every single time, and he loves it. He is also completely obsessed with water. He bites the hose. He has his own pool. He has a little fountain that he presses down on until it squirts him in the face, which has never once discouraged him.

He has his own website, Ruff Times, where the adventures get told from his side.

Jasper, a black lab mix, lying in his green paddling pool in the back yard with his tongue out
Jasper wrapped in a towel on the deck after a swim, grinning at the camera
Jasper curled up in a pile of blankets and pillows indoors
Steve, a black cat, sitting inside an Amazon cardboard box and looking up at the camera
Steve, a black cat, curled up in a round grey cat bed beside his scratching pad
Steve, a black cat, sitting on a hardwood floor and looking back over his shoulder

Steve

Steve is about eight, from Hull Seaside Animal Rescue. He is still deciding how he feels about travel. He is getting there, mostly because he has worked out that wherever we go, he goes too.

Steve loves a scratching pad. He is a genuinely terrible litter box user and flings it across the entire bathroom, which is exactly as annoying as it sounds. And he believes, without evidence, that every cardboard box in this house belongs to him.

His current project is grass. Every morning, when we get up and let Jasper out, Steve wants grass. So I bring blades of it back inside, sit down on the floor with him, and hand them over one at a time. This is my life now.

Traveling with pets: 10 things that actually help

All of this comes from taking these three on the road, and getting some of it wrong first.

  1. Send something from home with them. For the first couple of trips, bring bedding or a toy that already smells like home, so the RV is not a completely foreign place.
  2. Give them a bed that lives in the RV. Same bed, same spot, every trip. It becomes their place instead of a strange one.
  3. Never leave without their food and medications. Pack those first. Running out on the road is not always a problem you can solve locally.
  4. Start short. Do a couple of small trips before a big one and build up, especially if they are nervous.
  5. Use a collar that cannot break off. With your contact information on it, so whoever finds them can call you.
  6. Add a campground tag. This one was passed on to me. A reusable tag with your site number, so anyone who finds your pet knows exactly where they belong. Put the campground name on it too.
  7. Keep the rabies tag current. And keep a photo of the vaccination record on your phone. You will be asked for it eventually.
  8. Know the temperature inside. Never leave a pet in a parked RV without knowing how warm it is in there.
  9. Find the emergency vet before you need one. Look it up when you arrive, not when something is already wrong.
  10. Keep a recent photo of each pet on your phone. If you ever have to show someone, you want a current picture, not one from three years ago.