Moving with Pets - Part 2 - Smelling Like Home

Moving is stressful for everyone, including your pets. Since an animal's sense of smell is infinitely greater than ours, it's no wonder that they will be less stressed when there are familiar smells around them.

Making the New Place Smell Like Home to Your Pets  
Another useful trick is to rub a warm damp towel over your cat's body and especially around its face to remove some of your cat's scent. Then rub the towel with the scent onto prominent surfaces around the house such as on corners of furniture and on doorways. This marks the new house with the cat's scent and helps the cat to realize that your new house is its home as well.

Alternatively, purchase some 'Feliway' from your veterinarian. The Feliway Diffuser contains a synthetic equivalent of the scents or pheromones that are found normally on a cat's body and especially around its face. These calming pheromones have been proven as an effective control for a range of behavior disorders displayed by cats, such as urine spraying or settling cats in unknown or stressful environments.

For dogs, calming pheromones are available in the form of Adaptil plug-in diffusers for inside or you can fit your dog with an Adaptil collar. Ideally, the Adaptil collar should be placed on your dog a month before you move and it needs to be replaced on a monthly basis.