This made sense, so we got three decent looking carriers (one for each cat…we went with the large pet carrier made by Tutto) and placed them strategically around the house.

Now we find them sleeping in them, playing in and on them, and generally thinking of them as another piece of furniture…so they don’t panic at all when we put them in for a trip (it’s still a bit of a coaxing trick if they’re wide awake and want to play, but they don’t run and hide). They are so comfortable with them that when we had to take Zorro on a trip with us, he dove back into the carrier right after I took him through the metal detector at the airport. He couldn’t wait to get back into his cave.

That’s the best vote of confidence in this approach I can think of (before we got them each a carrier, we would frequently have to wake one up and remove it from the carrier to put in the other one who was ‘going for a ride’. The correct one was never the one sleeping there when you wanted it to be…).