Cat Transport Services

For a cabin flight, the carrier is the only specification that matters, and it is checked at the gate rather than at booking. It has to fit under the seat in front, and the airline publishes the exact dimensions for that aircraft, not for its fleet. A soft-sided carrier gains you a little tolerance because it compresses; a rigid one does not.

For cargo, the crate has to meet IATA container requirements: ventilation on all four sides, a secure door, absorbent lining and dishes fixed to the door. Cats are escape artists in a way dogs are not, so the fastener detail matters more than people expect. We check the specific carrier or crate against the specific flight rather than against a general chart.

Multi-cat households are common and they change the arithmetic. Airlines cap how many animals travel in the cabin on a single flight, usually a small number across the whole aircraft rather than per passenger, so two cats in the cabin can mean two bookings on the same flight or two different flights. That has to be settled before anyone buys a ticket.

Whether two cats may share one container depends on the airline, the destination and the cats themselves. Some carriers allow two compatible animals of similar size in one approved container, others require one each regardless of how well they get along, and some destinations have their own view. We confirm it for your specific route rather than assume, because the place this gets discovered is the check-in counter.

Where cats travel separately, we keep them on the same routing wherever the booking allows, so they arrive together and go home together.

Australia, New Zealand and Japan are rabies-free or rabies-controlled, and they protect that status with rules that have nothing to do with airlines. A titre test at an approved laboratory, a waiting period counted from the day the lab receives the sample rather than from the day you book, and paperwork that has to reach the destination authority before the cat does. Hawaii applies its own version of the same idea.

The waiting period is the part that surprises people. It is measured in months, not weeks, and it cannot be shortened by paying more or asking earlier. A cat moving from Canada to one of these destinations needs the vet sequence started roughly six months before the flight, and the flight is close to the last thing arranged rather than the first.

Australia is the one that catches Canadians most often, because quarantine at Mickleham is booked separately and the slots are finite. Our Australian quarantine guide works through that timeline in detail.

Most trouble on a cat move happens on the ground and is preventable.

The commonest is the carrier. A rigid carrier measured to the published limit still fails if the aircraft that day has a smaller under-seat space, and cabin dimensions vary by aircraft rather than by airline. We check against the aircraft, not the fleet.

Next is the cabin allowance. Owners book their own seat, then discover the animal slots for that flight are already taken. The cabin space has to be reserved at the same time as your seat, sometimes by phone, and it is not always visible during online booking.

Third is the paperwork window. A health certificate issued a few days too early expires before travel, and reissuing it means another vet visit and another CFIA appointment. The dates are knowable in advance and the whole sequence can be worked backward from the flight, which is what we do before anything is booked.

Every export from Canada runs through the CFIA. The fee is small. The appointment timing is not, and it has to be built into the plan early when you have a fixed move date.

The sequence is what has to be right: microchip before rabies vaccination, rabies before the titre test where a destination requires one, and the health exam inside a window that is often only ten days wide. Get the order wrong and the fix is not paperwork, it is waiting.

Cats hide stress rather than showing it, which is why the usual advice to keep travel short misses the point. A cat that has lived with its carrier for three weeks travels better on a long route than a cat meeting the carrier on the morning of a short one.

Leave the carrier open at home well before the move, feed in it, and let it become furniture. Airlines will not accept sedated animals in the hold, and most vets advise against sedation for flying at all, so acclimatisation is the tool you actually have.

We arrange moves within Canada and international moves out of the major gateways, including Toronto Pearson, Vancouver, Montréal-Trudeau and Calgary. Door to door is the default, so we collect from your home and deliver to the new one.

If your city is not a gateway, the plan opens with a road leg to one that is, and that is built into the timeline rather than left to you.

A cat move has fewer large lines than a dog move, which is the main reason it costs less. Vet fees are set by your clinic.

Airline cost is the variable. Within Canada a cat in the cabin can start around $50, which is why in-cabin is almost always the cheapest route where the carrier fits. Cargo and international bookings are quoted per booking, because the price moves with the route, the season and the aircraft. Destinations with quarantine sit at the top of the scale, and there the quarantine rather than the flight is what you are paying for.

Send us the breed and weight, where you are moving from and to, and roughly when. That is enough for us to tell you whether your cat can fly in the cabin, what the timeline looks like and what it will cost. If the honest answer is that you can do this yourself, we will tell you that too.