moving to another country with a cat
Hello everyone, my name is Annaëlle and this is Luna. This is my cat
and if you follow us for a long time, you know that this is a new location we moved back from Canada to France and
While were living in Canada, we adopted this
Baby cat she's not a baby. She's 14 years old
She's a Birman cat
and today I wanted to talk about how we went from Canada to France with a cat and how
How she handled the moving process what
Administrative paper, we had to fill and stuff like that.
So this is going to be a rather long video
Grab a cup of tea and if you have a specific question or if you are looking for something in particular
There would be time code over there and in the description so that you can click
and skip the parts that you don't want to watch
Quick disclaimer first, my experience is not going to be the same as yours.
My cat is not your cat. So
what I tell is not the only
experience
Available. I'm pretty sure some people already have already done this video
But I wanted to talk about my experience and give you a little tips and advice on what I've done so
This is Luna. She's a burman cat.
She's 14 years old. She is a very calm cat
We adopted her two years ago
before that
We don't know much about her story
I know that she has been with another family with a baby and other cats and
That her vaccinations were not
Done so we had to redo that
If your cat is already vaccined and all that stuff
there was a part that you won't need to know
Because she's a burman
She is quite small.
Even if she's 14.
She's super light
I guess she is a little bit under three kilograms and
She has breathing issue that's species of the cat as does that she had a little bit of a heart problem
So if she stressed she might go into cardiac arrest
But she's 14 once again. So that's pretty okay for age
So due to this condition we didn't wanted her to go in the cargo area of a plane
We wanted her to be in the cabin with us
Some flight company don't allow cats to be in the cabin unless
They are service animals
because she's very small
We are lucky to do not have to care about the weight that the airline company allows
But we did care about the size of the luggage. We already had
a luggage for her and it was too big for Air France
And Air Canada and Air Transat didn't allow cats on the cabin
So the only choice we had was Corsair, but I guess if we had chosen a smaller
carrier bag for her we could have gone with
Canada and Air France.
So we had to buy an extra ticket for her
when you buy your tickets on the website, you can call the
Sale service, I guess and you say I want to add my caton it.
I guess it was
130 CAD
We had to state her age her race
So she was allowed to have a space on the plane
now we did choose our
Seat on the plane. It was an extra
$20, I guess
and we choose the row that
Down side from three to two seats. That way we had still a bit of space on our left side
Well, we knew that she could be protected. So that was very nice
She wasn't between our legs or under the seat. She really had
her own space
So about the more administrative part to go from France to Canada is not the same thing as going to
Canada to UK for example, you might want to talk to your vet about that
what I'm going to talk about is to go from
Quebec to France so might be a little bit different for you
We had to go to the vet to make sure that all her
vaccine were
okay, as I mentioned before she did not have vaccine for
rabbies and stuff like that. So we had to do it.
I think it was three months in advance and
Then we had another
Vet
visit I guess it was three weeks in advance to make sure that
Everything was okay for her
including parasites
her heart issue
Breathing problems and stuff. They had a paper to fill in blue ink that's very important blue ink
It was a certificate of good health of our cat that we had to give to another
place
called the ACIA
that read the paper we had to fill another form and
They stamped it. It was $20 and
The paper basically said we
confirm that this cat is in good health and she won't bring any parasites or not
Allowed stuff into your country. T
hat's the paper that you need to give to
the border.
the Canadian one and the French one.
We also have to give the passport of our cat
She already had one her previous human gave us her passport. So
That was very good. She had a digital implant with our information
on her back the back of her head and
So we had to make sure that these informations
still where relevant and we put the French address where we can stay
I think we need to change it because we just moved
I had to sign a bunch of papers as well saying
I wasn't going to sell her back in France that she was going to stay with us
If you were looking to sell or I don't know give your cat to someone else in another country
I guess there is additional
paper to fill
Sorry, I can't help you with that. But you can ask your vet about that
our vet, what's really helpful about all the people we have to fill in and and
the Canadian
Quebec website has a bunch of information you can search
the French one
not so much, but I'll put all the links in descriptions so that
If you're looking for these files in particular you can find them
And that's about it on the paper of slash
administrative forms
on to the travel itself we
Weren't allowed to give Luna food or water and because she was kinda trapped on her
bag she
Wasn't that hungry, but we managed to give her some water because
For an older cat it's kind of important that she drinks
so
Once we were in the plane really settled in we gave her some water.
We are really lucky to have a very quiet cat
She didn't cry that much
she
did meow once
Because she had peed on her bag
So what we planned on doing was
to put
It I think called a pee pad
it is something specific for dogs training, but we couldn't find one so we bought a
older people
Bed sheet that we cut in 4.
so that we can replace it whenever she was peeing.
So she peed twice
On it and she started crying on that
I can't remember exactly because I was sleeping but my partner Nicolas
did change her on the
baby
Thing in the toilets.
So that was very easy
If your cart is not that calm
I guess there is some medication you can give them.
I read about some collars that have
some pheromone or
essential oils that you can give to your cats
because Luna was very calm and
She didn't really respond usually to either catnip or things like that.
We didn't want to
Bother with a plastic collar that we didn't like very much
Because they don't have the quick release on it
and the vet didn't recommend her to have some medication
because of her heart issue
So because she was very calm
we didn't give her any medication,
but that is something that you can think of for your cats if
the vet is okay with that.
one thing that we were kinda worrying about is that if someone complains about being
allergic to cats
I read that Luna is hypoallergenic
Because she's a birman, but that's not a argument that you can say
on a plane
because we booked her flight in advance
I guess people were aware that they were going to be a cat
or at least they didn't mention having any issues with it.
The person in front of us was kinda happy to see a cat. So that was good and
Because she was so discrete
People didn't even notice that she was here. So that was good.
She was in her carrier for a total of 15 hours
The plane was seven hour long and we have to be like two hours before the flight in the queue
Plus the
transport and
stuff that was a bit overwhelming and she definitely was happy to get out of the
carrier in the end
we gave her some water and some food as soon as we were on the
House, we were staying
and she had a litter tray with kinda of some different litter.
So she was not
not very happy about it, but she didn't
Litter outside
After the moving process we kept her on a leash
Every time we we went outside
Just because we wanted her to know where she was and where her food was.
We took her to the vet and he said
That nothing was wrong with her. Her heart was fine. She kinda had a issue with her
Join, she's starting to develop arthritis, so she had some
Pellets for that but she's fine now that don't have to jump
That much on things because we are on the flat house.
She'll have her
Toys and that's that has her smell and hair all over it. So
we kept giving her thing that had a smell to give a
some point to
Get attached to
basically everything changed on her life and for us human too.
it's the stressful process and she can
sense that so
that's always the tricky things to know if youre cat is stress because of you or
because of the situation, but I
Hope that this video helps you if you are going through this process as well.
Let me know if you have any question about
the moving process or the cats
Even if you have a very specific situation I try to help you as much as I can
Let me know in the comment section
and if you like this kind of educational video on expat life and moving
From country to country
I give it give the video a thumbs up
So I know I can do more of that and I hope to see you next time. Bye