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Moving house with pets

One item on this page is a legal requirement with a penalty attached, and it’s the one people forget: the microchip database.

That's the item with a deadline. The rest of moving with an animal is about managing a few days of genuine disruption for something that has no idea what's happening and reads the whole event through your behaviour.

Cats: the two-week rule

The standard advice — and it is worth following even though it feels excessive — is to keep a cat indoors for at least two weeks after a move. Cats navigate by a learned territory map, and one let out early will frequently try to walk back to the old house, sometimes across roads and sometimes for miles.

  1. 1

    Set up one room first

    Before the van arrives, put the cat in a closed room with litter, food, water, a bed and something that smells of home. Sign on the door. This prevents the classic disaster of a cat slipping out past an open front door on moving day.

  2. 2

    Keep them in for two weeks minimum

    Longer for a nervous cat. Use the time to establish that food comes from this kitchen — that association does a lot of the work.

  3. 3

    First trip out, hungry and supervised

    Let them out shortly before a meal, so there's a reason to come back, and stay with them. Short first outing, then food.

  4. 4

    Update the microchip before the first outing

    Not after. The window where it matters most is exactly the window where they're most likely to go missing.

Dogs: routine over everything

Dogs generally cope better with a move than cats, because their attachment is to people rather than territory. The disruption that affects them is the change in routine, and the fortnight of chaos around it.

  • Keep walk and feed times the same through the move if you possibly can. It's the single most stabilising thing available.
  • Take them out of the house on moving day — daycare, a friend, a long walk with someone else. Doors propped open all day and an anxious dog is how dogs get lost.
  • Don't wash their bed in the week of the move. Familiar smell matters more than clean.
  • Expect some regression — toileting accidents, clinginess, unsettled nights — for a week or two. Treat it as temporary unless it isn't.
  • Keep them on a lead in the new area until you're confident of the recall there. A known dog in an unknown place is effectively a different dog.

Smaller animals and fish

  • Rabbits and guinea pigs — move in their own carrier with familiar bedding, and set them up in a quiet room away from the front door. They're highly stress-sensitive and hide illness well, so watch appetite closely afterwards.
  • Birds — cover the cage for the journey to reduce stress, and keep temperature stable. Draughty vans and long waits are the real risk.
  • Fish — genuinely difficult over any distance and worth researching properly for your setup. Short moves are usually done by bagging fish in tank water and keeping filter media wet so the bacterial colony survives. For a long move, ask your aquatics shop — some will board fish.
  • Reptiles — temperature is the whole problem. Plan the journey around keeping them in range, not around convenience.

The vet, and the paperwork

Pet admin around a move

  • 4 weeksFind a vet near the new address and check they’re registering new patients
  • 2 weeksRequest your pet’s records be transferred, and get copies of vaccination history
  • 2 weeksOrder enough of any ongoing medication to cover the move and a gap
  • 1 weekCheck pet insurance — tell them the new address, as premiums are postcode-based
  • Week afterUpdate the microchip database — a legal requirement for dogs
  • Week afterRegister with the new vet properly, not just in an emergency

Pet insurance is worth a specific check, not just an address update. Premiums are partly set by postcode, so a move can change what you pay, and an out-of-date address on a policy can complicate a claim at exactly the wrong moment.

Moving day, in order

  1. 1

    Morning: secure or remove

    Cat in a closed room with a sign on the door, dog off-site. Do this before anyone arrives, not when the van pulls up.

  2. 2

    Journey: in the car with you

    Never in the removal van. Carrier secured, no food an hour or two before travel, and don’t open a carrier at a service station — this is a common way to lose a cat.

  3. 3

    Arrival: one room again, first

    Set up a single quiet room at the new house before the animal comes in — litter, water, bed, familiar smells — and let the rest of the house wait.

  4. 4

    Night one: closer than usual

    Expect a bad night and plan for it. Sleeping nearby for the first couple of nights costs you very little and settles most animals considerably faster.

Everything else in the move still applies — the full who-to-notify list covers the forty-odd organisations, several of which have real deadlines.

MovePlan puts the pet tasks above into the same dated plan as the rest of the move, built from your actual move date, and drafts your address-change letters filled in with your details. £14.99 once, for 90 days.

See the full plan

The complete dated checklist and real sample letters.

See a sample plan