Travel with Pets - Flying LAS-SEA on WN with 2 cats - recommendations?

One of my coworkers will be flying LAS-SEA with 2 cats in WN's on-board cat carriers. The cats are both 20+ years old & this will be a move for them. My coworkers is moving to the east coast & the cats will be moving to their previous home with their original owners in SEA.

One of the cats will likely be crying & may have some anxiety. Other than Xanax ;), any recommendations to naturally put the cat at ease? She's looking for non-prescription safe method to put her cat at ease while flying.

She leaves on Wednesday, so any thoughts would be appreciated!

One of my coworkers will be flying LAS-SEA with 2 cats in WN's on-board cat carriers. The cats are both 20+ years old & this will be a move for them. My coworkers is moving to the east coast & the cats will be moving to their previous home with their original owners in SEA.

One of the cats will likely be crying & may have some anxiety. Other than Xanax ;), any recommendations to naturally put the cat at ease? She's looking for non-prescription safe method to put her cat at ease while flying.

She leaves on Wednesday, so any thoughts would be appreciated!

I know this is late, but here's my experience. I moved, and had to make two trips on US Airways from SFO-CLT-RDU. One trip was with two 5 year old male cats and another with our 18 year old female.

I'd be reluctant to use Xanax on an older cat. There is a small risk of complications with any kind of medication. Our cat did make some noise during the flight but the engines were so loud that it wasn't that noticeable. I think most people around us didn't even notice we had cats. Instead of Xanax, I'd use a natural calming, anti-anxiety spray like you find in most pet stores.

We found some soft carriers which were so much better than trying to use a hard case. We put dog training pads in each carrier in case the cats had an accident. The males didn't go to the bathroom, but the female did. I think she got scared the first time we landed in CLT and she felt that thump as we touched down. I think it scared her enough that she urinated on her dog training pad while still in her carrier. We had to clean her up and replace the dog training pad.

We were very grateful to find a wheelchair accessible bathroom at the airport. It gave us some privacy where we could take the cats out of their carriers and let them stretch. We tried giving the cats some food and water in the bathroom but they wouldn't touch anything.

Having traveled many times with cats, the one thing I'd note is that security can be a problem.

Our approach is as follows:

1. Alert TSA personnel that you have a cat, so they know what to expect.
2. Send everything besides the carrier through the conveyor belt.
3. Open carrier, scruff cat (if s/he is easily spooked), and send carrier through.
4. Put cat back in carrier head first and zip, preferably with help from someone else traveling with you.

The key is that you don't want any delays at a point when the cat can get loose. For one of our cats this was a complete non-issue because she loved strangers & new situations -- she even once got screened with a wand because my wife was setting off the metal detector alarm. But for our other two (who were feral when we got them), it's been imperative to scruff.

Thanks for the tips, WN was able to issue a gate pass for my coworkers boyfriend, so she was able to go through with relative ease. The cats actually were calm the entire way.

3. Open carrier, scruff cat (if s/he is easily spooked), and send carrier through.
4. Put cat back in carrier head first and zip, preferably with help from someone else traveling with you.

The key is that you don't want any delays at a point when the cat can get loose. For one of our cats this was a complete non-issue because she loved strangers & new situations -- she even once got screened with a wand because my wife was setting off the metal detector alarm. But for our other two (who were feral when we got them), it's been imperative to scruff.Do your cats wear collars/harnesses? Our boys are so big (15 lbs, 12 lbs) that I can't imagine trying to scruff them, but when traveling with them last fall, we used their harnesses and leashes to keep control of them when necessary. The harness went on and the cat into the carrier before we pulled out every morning, and the harnesses didn't come off until we reached the next hotel room. During the day, we'd walk them (on leash) when the opportunity arose to give them a break from the car (10 days, 3,000 miles). We're heading to Florida in May, and I'm still debating flying/driving because of the cats - I just don't think they'd even fit in underseat bags. Our Maine Coon is 13 inches at the shoulder and 40 from nose to tail tip.