Drive. 700miles isn’t that far for a nice drive. It’s about 2 – 4 stops at a gas station 1 way, based on how good of mileage you get from your vehicle.

You can drive and pick them up or they can be shipped through the airlines. Most airlines have pet shipping policies so you will want to check those. These include things like physicals within 10 days of the flight.

If you use an airline, be very, very careful.

@syz what should I look out for?

Probably the safest way is to drive. There’s something just kind of weird and creepy to me about shipping an animal across the country on a plane all by itself. The cat may not enjoy being in a crate for that long, but the dog should be okay if you take several breaks to let him get some air and run around.

Depending on what kind of car you have, you may be able to set up a little gated area in the back of the vehicle for the cat to have some space—but a bowl of food/water and a litter box so she wouldn’t be all cooped up for the whole ride. I’ve done that with cats in the past and it’s worked for some of them; it depends on the personality of the cat.

Seems I will be renting a vehicle and driving :)

I have had to ship my pets to and from Hawaii. No, choice in driving there. I would drive if that option were open. Pets have died from heat and cold being shipped on planes and it is probably more stressful to them to ride in a car.

However you do it, have copies of their shot records with you when you are travelling with them. Some states are real fussy about the shot record.

Also find out what the requirements are in any state you travel through if you are driving with them. It doesn’t happen often, but without the records, if some cop is having a bad day, your animals could end up quarantined.

An extremely large catapult? Or a dogapult? Or a hamsterapult? Or…you get the idea.

We rented a Toyota Sienna from Hertz, and drove round trip with 4 cats from Los Angeles, CA to New Orleans, LA.
We needed a van because we kept them in a large cage during transport.

Most Motel 6’s are pet friendly.

There are pet shipping companies, just like package shipping companies. It would probably be more cost effective than driving yourself over to get them.

Personally speaking, I wouldn’t feel very comfortable about leaving my pet’s well being in anyone else’s hands than my own.

For that short a distance, I would take a long weekend and make the drive myself.

I definitely wouldn’t ship them on a regular airline. They are considered “baggage”. If I wouldn’t subject a child to something I certainly wouldn’t do less for my pet who has far less ability to speak up for themselves than most children.

There would only be one exception I might consider. There are numerous animal rescue groups who have transportation networks of volunteers all over the place who cooperate with each other.

It sounds as if you may have the time to make inquiries and schedule well ahead of time.

As long as they have a planned run convenient to include your pet, I think they would welcome a donation from you equivalent to whatever your cost would be to do it yourself.

This way you know your pet is in loving and caring hands and a worthy organization gets some much needed cash.

Look for any cat (or possibly dog, ferret, or rabbit) rescue groups in your area, even breed-specific ones such as Siamese etc. Since all the animals will be in their own carriers, I think any animal group would be ok They are well organized and have incredible transpo networks.

Just be aware that some of their trips are spontaneous last-minute arrangements as they pull from shelters when a cat’s time is up so they need to work fast to get it to a tempo foster home.

If you and your ex can be somewhat flexible in your arrangements, this may work out to the mutual benefit of all concerned.

At least it’s worth a few phone calls. I found out about all of this a few years ago when I adopted a cat whom I didn’t know was FELV positive Since I already had another Senior cat who was negative I couldn’t take the risk of keeping her as it’s highly contagious.

But she was too sweet for me
to just euthanize her. So I got in touch with a network of folks who would try to find an adoptive home for her. I’m in MI and one couple who had room was in ALA. but they had an entire network of volunteer drivers for transport who were used to these types of arrangements. These folks really love animals and will go out of their way for them.

But someone local came forward and she’s happily in Dearborn now. But I know that all types of animal rescue groups do similar cooporative transport networking all the time.

The local Animal shelters can probably give you contact numbers for the rescue groups in your area. Some may be in the phone book but many just don’t have an advertising budget since everything goes to the animals.

You can also post an ad in the pet section of your local Craigslist. All the animal lovers hang put there and they’ll know of the rescue groups local to you. That’s also what I use to garner referrals for a good vet when I’m new to an area.

Whichever names keep coming up in the email responses are the ones I try first. It’s just like tapping the collective but in a VERY local pet-specific way.