Travel advice for 18 yo cat

(Originally posted on r/cats) My cat is 18 years old, she’s a lovely grandma cat, in good shape but spends most of her time sleeping, she lives at my parents place who have a big house and a garden. I’ve had her since I was 10 and I love her dearly ✨

When my parents went on holidays during the summer for the past two decades they used to leave her at home for a month, with occasional visits from the neighbors to check on her, refill her food and water, and access to the garage, and she was fine with that.

Last year my parents stayed home during the summer so we didn’t have this issue, but they are leaving again for a month this summer, and I am worried my cat is now too old to spend a whole month by herself with occasional visits from friends & neighbors. She has a very precise day routine like an old person, she sleeps and eats and goes outside a bit and we put her in a room of the house where she sleeps at night. Plus one of the neighbors now have a very aggressive cat that often come in our garden and she gets extremely nervous, so we have to be there to check the other cat and her do not fight.

So we have two options for the summer :

1) I pay someone to come and see her every day but she’ll be troubled anyway because she won’t be able to go in and out of the house (my dad refuses to leave the house keys to someone) she would just have access to the garage and the garden which is not ideal - and she likely won’t know the person who’ll come + there is this other aggressive cat that could bully her

2) My parents want to bring her on holidays, but that implies a 9hour drive (she Never comes in the car except to go to the vet which she hates) to get to a big house with a garden in the south of the country. In addition to the stress induced by the car ride, even once they get there I don’t know if she could be left going in and out of the house in the garden in a place she doesn’t know (we only took her there once when she was a baby). I’m afraid she’s too old for such a big change, she could get lost or traumatized? Or would that be fine ?

I cannot stay at my parents to take care of her during the summer because of work.

Thanks for reading me, your advice would be previous to me !

submitted by /u/greenland1237
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/ny1l9t/travel_advice_for_18_yo_cat/