Maybe?

I have two felines who are vocal about the the car. This has been a thing since I got them as kittens. You put them in the car and the calico begins to scream, so the grey cat, participates, and then the grey cat gets bored and stops, so the calico screams more and then the grey cat doubles his effort.

And back in the day, it used to be a three-ish hour round trip to the vet. So once a year, you were just in for it as the driver.

Then we moved, and it was a nine hour drive to our new house, and we tried to drug them, but it didn't really work (there was a previous post about this). Then we moved again, and it was a thirteen hour drive. My husband and I decided to really hedge our bets. We not only got them better drugs, but we bought them some really fancy, spacious carriers. Maybe the cats were upset because they were claustrophobic (their old cat carriers were pretty small. I didn't have ton of space to store them).

So, for the thirteen hour move, we put them in their own cat carrier palaces, drugged them with fancy drugs, and put them in separate cars.

And the calico was quiet for twenty minutes of the thirteen hour drive, only to wake up when the car went up a windy pass and begin her complaints with renewed vigor.

But now we live two minutes from their vet. Half the time they haven't worked themself into enough of a rage to really get into screaming before we are done driving.

So this year, I put them in their palace cat carriers and brought them into the vet for their annual check up.

"Wow. Those are fancy cat carriers," the vet told me.

I told him we thought it would make the multi-state move easier for them.

"Oh. Did it?" he asked.

Did it?

"I have no idea," I said, realizing I hadn't ever confronted that question so directly. "They still screamed the same amount. So maybe? Maybe not?"

And the vet, a very, very stoic man coughed out a laugh.

"Well, based on that, I feel confident, even without seeing them, you do in fact own felines."

So at least there's that. A highly educated human agrees, my cats are cats, and that's all we'll ever really know.