An ordinary boarding checklist covers food, a carrier and a familiar blanket. A cat with a chronic condition needs that checklist plus a medical layer, because the stay asks strangers to run care that is normally held in one owner's head. The preparations below protect her if she stays well, and protect her faster if she does not.
Prove Stability Before the Stay, Not During It
Book a vet checkup near the stay, timed so her stability is confirmed before the care is arranged around it. Ask the vet directly whether boarding suits her at this stage of her condition, because the honest answer may be that a home sitter, or a cattery used to boarding cats under veterinary care, fits her better than a general facility. A cat needing precise medication times or close monitoring should be placed where that precision is routine, not where it is a favour.
Ask the cattery plainly whether the team is comfortable with her needs, including medication given to a cat who resists, and what the team would do overnight if she deteriorated. A hesitant yes is a reason to choose differently, and hearing it before the stay is far better than discovering it during one. If she has never boarded with her condition, a short trial stay tests the arrangement while the stakes are low, and the provider's agreed terms should be confirmed in writing: the trial arrangements, the overnight checking arrangements, and the rates, before a long booking is placed.
Write Medication Instructions That Cannot Be Misread
Put her medication routine on paper in plain, generic terms, copying the prescription exactly: what each medicine is for, how it is given, where it fits in her day, and how she usually takes it, including the food or approach that works at home. State what to do if a dose is refused, spat out or only partly taken, and whether a missed dose should be reported to you at once or noted for the vet. Do not invent, adjust or round anything: the written sheet copies the prescription and the vet's directions, and any change to her routine belongs to the vet, never to the boarding sheet.
Medication travels in its original packaging, labelled, with enough for the whole stay and extra in case a return journey is delayed. Pack her usual food for the full stay as well, because a cat managing a chronic condition should not meet a sudden diet change and a strange building in the same week. Note her normal appetite, water intake, litter habits and energy in a few lines, so staff can compare the cat in front of them with the cat you described rather than with a generic healthy cat.
Brief the Flare, With a Call Order
A flare briefing describes what trouble looks like for this cat, not for her condition in general. Write the early signs you have actually seen: the appetite change, the hiding, the litter difference, the breathing or behaviour shift that has preceded a flare before, and how quickly those signs have previously developed. Then write the response in order: the first steps for staff, such as keeping her quiet and warm and noting the time the signs began, and the order in which staff should call for help, with your number, your vet's number and the out-of-hours service all listed.
Leave signed permission for emergency veterinary treatment and a clear arrangement for urgent costs, so no one waits for your reply while she needs to be seen. On collection, ask what was observed across the stay and update her briefing with anything new, because the next stay should start from what this one taught. Through KinsLe, Care Pass lets you share that briefing with one particular cattery for a set period only, limited to the instructions the team needs, so her medical details are available on shift and not beyond the stay.