Obviously, we have to fly to get from North America to Europe, but the options aren't as simple as picking a flight from Orlando to Paris. For one, there isn't a direct flight, meaning we'd have to do a layover, and we're very sensitive to the cats suffering through long durations without a bathroom or being able to eat and drink.

Enter La Compagnie, a French airline that does all business class at a reasonable cost. My favorite thing about them is that they allow pet ticket booking in-line with booking our human tickets. This is a HUGE deal. Most airlines want you to go ahead and book the tickets and then call the airline for availabliity for pets. There is typically a limit of two pets per flight, so if someone else is already flying with a pet, you'll be unable to get tickets for your pets. The only problem with LaCompagnie is that they don't fly from Orlando to Paris, so we decided on doing a roadtrip from Orlando to New York, then take a direct flight to Paris.

This sounded great! We'd get to acclaimate the cats to traveling with a 20-hour road trip, and also have some fun along the way. We have quite a bit of luggage so we chose a large gas-guzzling SUV. We also didn't want to spend all day on the road, so we worked in a hotel stay after each session of 6-8 hours of driving.