Pack it before the due date, not before the trip
The defining constraint in this household is timing and tiredness. A boarding folder assembled in the week before travel, in a house with a newborn, will be assembled at 2 a.m. with one hand — so build it early, ideally before the baby arrives or in the first calm week after, and then only refresh the dates. The core is the same as any cat's: vaccination record showing current boosters, because a cattery will require it at check-in; the microchip number and registry; your vet's details including the out-of-hours service; and written authorisation for emergency treatment naming who decides and who pays if you are mid-flight or mid-feed and unreachable.
Add the baby-protection page a normal folder lacks
This folder needs a house-rules page no other household writes. State that the nursery door stays closed and the cat is never to be left sleeping in the cot, pram, or Moses basket, and that the sitter or anyone collecting the cat follows the hygiene order: litter tray and feeding duties first, hands washed thoroughly, and only then any contact with the baby's things. Note where the cat's food is prepared and that its bowls are washed separately from bottle equipment. If the cat is going to a cattery, add the return rule too — the cat comes back into its own room first, with vaccinations and flea cover confirmed current, before it roams a house with a newborn again. These lines protect the baby without treating the cat as a hazard to be managed at arm's length.
Contacts for people who cannot always answer
Choose the contact order for the reality of new parenthood: phones on silent, parents asleep in shifts, nobody able to hold a long conversation. Put your mobile first, then a fully briefed backup outside the house — a grandparent, sibling, or close friend — who is authorised to make vet decisions and collect the cat if needed, and make sure that person knows they are in the folder. Then list the vet, the cattery or sitter, and the health visitor or a neighbour who can let a sitter in if keys go astray. Write your travel return date beside the contacts, plus the plan if you are delayed, because in this season of life the delay plan is the part most likely to be tested.
A routine sheet that reflects the new household
Describe the cat's life as it is now, not as it was before the baby. Feeding times may have shifted around night feeds; the cat's sleeping place may have moved out of the room that became the nursery; its tolerance for visitors may have changed. Write down where the cat now eats, sleeps, and retreats when the baby cries, which room is its guaranteed quiet space with a door the sitter keeps shut against household traffic, and any signs that it is struggling — hiding through the day, toileting outside the tray, going off food — that the sitter should report the same day rather than at the end of the trip. An honest sheet like this lets a carer protect the cat's equilibrium instead of accidentally recreating the household's most stressful version.
One packet that a tired person can just hand over
The real test of this folder is whether a half-awake parent can hand it to a sitter or carry it to a cattery without a scavenger hunt through a house full of baby equipment. KinsLe's Pet Passport keeps the cat's records together in one portable packet — vaccination proof, chip details, vet contacts, house rules, and routine — ready for boarding, sitting, or an unplanned vet trip, so the version that travels is complete even when the person packing is running on very little sleep.