MaamJay
Posts: 2101
Joined: 9/2/2005 Status: offline
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A pet transport company is a good idea, they should be able to work it out so the girls aren't sitting around either baking or freezing on the tarmac somewhere during flight changes. My sister used to run one here in Australia and tells Me it takes a lot of organising to ship pets internationally. Hopefully your cats aren't too aged or freaked by being in a carrier. A good company will probably get a cage big enough for the 2 to be together if they get on really well, that will be less traumatic for them. They should also handle the arrangements for getting them onto the plane and also being met the other side, depending on when you will be leaving US and arriving there. Even if you ought to be there yourself to collect them, they should have a contingency plan for someone to pick them up should you be unavoidably delayed. I moved from UK to Australia when I was 11, my parents handled that of course, and back then it took a very long time! More recently, I have moved diagonally across Australia, and that was a huge effort! Six covered a lot of points that I would have mentioned! Whatever boxes you do pack and ship ... I can't say enough about LABELLING them thoroughly. It's soooo annoying not to be able to find what you need. Worse still when you can't find the power cord for an appliance, or, as in the move before the last one, the movers packed the microwave in one box ... and its turntable in another, totally unlabelled GRRRRR! We didn't find it for DAYS! Try to rationalise ... though for Me, that's hard! I have so much sedimentary ... I mean, sentimental stuff LOL! Master's just as bad, which is why it cost Us A$10,000 to transport over 100 pieces of "furniture" and 213 boxes across country! Yes ... I know about the arguments for selling stuff and buying new ... and I'd have loved to do that with the furniture ... but you can only sell at a much reduced price (much of Our stuff is oldish anyway) ... and in a new town, it's hard to know where to go to buy good secondhand. Consequently, you end up buying new ... and We just couldn't afford that. It would have cost Us at least 2/3 of that to bring the contents given the nature of the transport (container) and there's no way We'd have saved enough to re-buy all the furniture at today's prices. As it was, I left the fridge, washer and dining suite behind ... just those 3 items cost $1800 to replace. And things like cleaning materials, chemicals, restocking the pantry with basics, herbs and spices ... all those things add up too! At least by bringing the furniture ... We knew where the contents would fit so unpacking was easier. And I'm the sort that made a scale diagram of the new place and then cut out scaled squares to represent the furniture pieces and moved them around till I worked out the best arrangement! So when We moved in, I could say precisely to the removalists where I wanted each item placed ... beats moving heavy stuff again yourself! Maam Jay aka violet[A]
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Life is a song ... and I love singing it! (By me!)
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