Moving Internationally With a Senior Cat Is Expensive

The vet bill and immigration fees just keep climbing.

This is the paid follow-up to: My Adventure Kitty Turned 8 This Month. If you don’t have a paid subscription, don’t worry. That post is free, and the next one will be too. This post is for the people who help me pay for grad school and adventures with paid subscriptions—as well as those who have appeared in my blog posts and videos over the years. Thank you!

At the start of 2019, I decided to build a tiny home. The goal was to have a permanent home base with a low mortgage while traveling six months out of the year.

During my tiny home journey, I discovered RVs and questioned whether I needed a house at all. By the end of the year, I had made up my mind: I was getting a travel trailer, and I was taking my cat with me.

Shadow was only four years old when he transitioned from docile house panther to curious adventure kitty. Over the next four years, our RV would become his full-time home. He saw the country one amazing parking spot at a time.

Now, we’re starting our biggest adventure yet—moving from Atlanta to Spain. And let me tell you, it is not cheap to move internationally with a cat, especially a senior.

Vet Appointments So Far

When I first adopted Shadow, the volunteers told me he had already been neutered and microchipped. They said I could update his microchip information when I brought him to the vet. Shadow has had annual vet visits, but because he’s an indoor-only cat and wears a tracker, I never checked the microchip information.

Then came Spain’s never-ending list of requirements.