No record you own is more place-bound than this one. Her treatment history crosses borders unchanged and her conditions list needs only a new practice name, but a map of hiding places describes a house she will never live in again, and the international move turns it into a closing document and then a blank page. Handling that honestly, finishing the old list properly and starting the new one patiently, protects her twice: once in the chaos of leaving, when a hiding cat can delay or endanger travel plans, and once on arrival, when a frightened cat in an unfamiliar house needs to be findable from her very first night.
Finishing the Old Map Before the Movers Arrive
Bring the leaving list fully up to date in the weeks before the move, while her habits are still ordinary enough to read. It should show her usual sleeping and hiding spots, room by room, any new favorites, and the places she must never be shut into, including cupboards and the garage, because packing changes a house daily and a cat who loses her usual spots to stacked boxes will improvise new ones in worse places, among packing materials, inside open cases, behind furniture waiting for collection. On moving day itself the list becomes a safety sweep: check every named spot and every shut-in risk before doors are propped open, before the carrier is closed, and before any vehicle leaves, since a cat shut into a van, a garage, or a packed room at the old address is the nightmare this document exists to prevent. Decide early which single room stays calm, furnished, and shut while the rest of the house is emptied, and note it on the list as her holding place for the day.
The Carrier Is Her Whole Map in Transit
Between homes, the list shrinks to one entry, and treating the carrier as her territory rather than her transport makes the journey easier to manage. Familiar bedding that smells of the old home, a cover that turns the carrier into a den, and handling that never drags her out of it for reassurance all follow from reading the carrier as her one chosen hiding place for the duration of travel. Anyone handling her in transit needs to know that a silent, pressed-down cat in a carrier is hiding in the only place available to her, not asking to be lifted out, and that opening the carrier anywhere insecure risks losing her in the worst possible place to lose a cat. Keep the closed-out old list with her travel papers anyway, since her described habits, the sorts of places she chooses and how deeply she hides when stressed, are the best prediction anyone has of how she will behave on arrival.
Rebuilding the Map in the New Home
Start the new list the way you started the first one after adoption, with the single room she lands in, and let it grow room by room as she is given the house. Record the spots she chooses in the new home in a fresh document rather than editing the old one, because the two maps describe different houses and merging them creates a list that matches neither. Walk the new home for shut-in risks with fresh eyes, since foreign houses hold unfamiliar ones, deep cupboards, cellars, utility spaces, and update the never-shut-in section for the building she actually lives in now. Keep the old list until she has clearly settled, then archive it rather than deleting it, because a record of how she mapped a previous home can still teach a sitter what kind of hider she is. Filed together in Pet Passport, where KinsLe keeps the pair as part of her history, the two maps tell the whole story of a cat who has lived in two countries.