I'm looking at traveling with a cat halfway across the country, my first time with a pet, and was curious about this. I'm looking at booking the "no carryon, personal item only" ticket and then paying the pet upcharge. When I travel alone, I usually have a bag of some basics and my iPad as a personal item. Since kitty goes under the seat, do I just tell people at the counters that the bag is my personal item (very careful to use that term and not "carryon") and put my usual bag in the overhead and hope nobody asks? Ideally I'll take my iPad out and stash the rest away since I expect this to be quite a trip. I actually called UA for confirmation and dealt with a person who told me that I'd have to pay a carryon upcharge for my iPad and then, after I asked him to look at the company site, changed his tune, so it seems like employees don't really know.

Finally, how does UA handle reservations etc with animals now? I see the ability to pay my pet upcharge is in their online reservations system. Do I still have to go to the ticket counter before security for tags etc? The reservations engine does say it only shows me planes/routes that will accept my pet, does this mean I don't have to do any sort of rush? One of the planes is a 777 and I've read about restrictions on those, but I'm not super plane-savvy so I'm not sure.