Boarding a cat during the week you move house stacks two disruptions on top of each other: she leaves home, and the home she returns to is a different address with different smells, different hiding places and boxes still taped shut. The paperwork matters more in that week, not less, because everything else about reaching you is in flux — your old landline is being disconnected, your post is redirected, and the phone number a cattery copied from an old form may be the one you have just replaced. Send her documents as one deliberate pack, prepared before packing starts, and keep your own copies on your phone while the originals sit at the cattery.
The Five-Part Pack That Travels With Her
The pack has five parts, and it should travel with her rather than in a removals box. First, her vaccination record, current and complete, since a cattery will want to see it at check-in rather than chase it later. Second, her microchip and registry details: the chip number and the registry holding her record, so any vet scanning her can trace her quickly. Third, her vet details: the practice she is registered with, its name and number, so the cattery calls the vet who actually knows her. Fourth, your new address — the address she is going home to, not the one you are leaving, written out in full. Fifth, both phone numbers: both numbers on which you can be reached during move week, written beside a note of which to try first. Before she goes in, check the registry entry itself carries that new address and both numbers, because the pack in the cattery office and the record a scanner reaches are two different places, and move week is when they drift apart.
Written Terms for Her Boarding Stay
Agree the stay itself in writing before drop-off day, not in a doorstep conversation while a removals van idles outside. Ask the cattery to confirm in writing the terms you have agreed: the nights booked, the rate for the stay, and the drop-off and collection arrangements, including what happens if the move slips and she needs an extra night. Moves do slip — completions run late, keys arrive hours behind schedule — and a cat whose collection terms were settled calmly in advance is collected under a plan rather than negotiated under pressure. Add your own written care notes to the same handover: her feeding routine, anything she must not be given, and the name of a local contact who can collect her if you are delayed at the new house. Keep a photograph of every page of that written agreement on your phone alongside your copies of her pack, so the terms and the documents are reachable from the same place while your paperwork is in boxes.
Move-Week Checks Before You Hand Her Over
Run three checks in the days before she boards. Confirm the cattery has received the five-part pack, and ring the numbers in it yourself to check they reach the phones you will actually be carrying. Tell the cattery plainly that you are mid-move, so a delayed collection reads as a known possibility rather than a worry. Then settle how her day-to-day care information reaches the person actually feeding her, rather than staying in an office file. A handover that ends when the stay ends keeps that sharing proportionate. Access scoped to her stay, handed to the particular carer on duty through Care Pass in KinsLe, lapses once she is home with you again.