Pets

Here’s How To Move Your Furbaby To Your New Home

by Kevyn Gohu
March 29, 2022

Furmoms and moms, here’s how to move your furbabies to your new home.

Moving houses will always be a stressful experience for the whole family, including our furbabies. There’s just a lot of packing and organizing to be done to lessen the number of trips. And if the car’s too small to accommodate everything, there’s making sure that the delivery people don’t break anything. Since our furbabies can’t communicate what they’re feeling, we need to be more aware of their mannerisms to understand their stress. Here are a few ways to ease the stress of your furbaby as you move into your new home.

1. If you’re the one driving, make sure you call out your furbaby’s name every now and then.

Calling out your furbaby’s name while you’re driving makes them feel more at ease. However, this means you’ll have to drop your driving speed to a more manageable one. Splitting your attention is never a good thing but it will help ease them through car travel. At the stoplight, you can give your furbaby a few pets and coos on the way to the new home to help lessen the anxiety.

2. Stay on one side of the road.

Here in the PH, staying on the rightmost lane meant for private vehicles is the safest. Assuming everyone follows the laws of the road, going on the left means you’re about to overtake and that means moving at a higher speed. But with a stressed-out furbaby sitting in the backseat, you’ll want to keep a certain speed to not scare them. It’ll also lessen the chances of swerving, getting cut, and among other things that induce road rage.

3. Prevent road rage.

For all drivers out there, we all have to admit that Metro Manila traffic is where the worst of our personalities come out. From screaming profanities inside the car to actually bringing down your window to yelling at the offending driver, these are common manifests of road rage. But your furbabies are highly sensitive to sound so screaming at the offenders is discouraged.

4. Bring something from the old home that’s familiar to your furbaby.

For cats, they’ll be curious but it’s good to bring their old cat tree with you. Not only will it serve as their base of operations for the adjustment week but it’ll serve as their sleeping quarters in their new home. Dogs may be happy with their dog bed or fluffy mat. But our furbabies would like a piece of the old home in the new one so that they feel familiar and safe.

5. If the kids are in the back, tell them it’s time to practice a bit of “quiet time”.

Loud noises are traumatizing and stressful for animals, especially with their more enhanced hearing. Also, being in a moving vehicle with no idea where they’re going is an extra layer of stress. The kids in the back can keep your furbabies company by petting them and soothing them on the way to the new home. Plus, it also stops the kids from screaming their heads off and fighting when they’re keeping your furbaby comfortable in the back.

6. Traveling at night MIGHT be preferred.

We say “might” because not all areas are safe at night, not everyone enjoys a night drive, and not all pets do well in the dark. Nighttime however assures there might be fewer people on the road so it might be a more relaxing drive. Morning assumes that people are still outside rushing to wherever they need to go, making all the main roads a traffic nightmare. Besides, honking of horns, swerves, and sudden breaks on the way to the new home might have your furbaby urinate in the car. And we all know that is not easy to clean at all.

Moving into a new home can be less stressful for the kids, you, and your furbaby.

Sometimes, it’s easy to just throw everything into the back and go. But furbabies perceive sounds and movement differently. Being smaller means their view of things is a lot bigger so they’ll be more terrified than our kids. We can easily hook our kids up to a gadget to keep them busy but our furbabies don’t have that kind of thing. It may be a bit stressful but no furbaby should be left behind for the sake of a new home. They’re part of the family just like our own kids.