Cats and building works

[Edd]

I'm looking for advice, we have two rescue cats who can both get very nervous but show it in different ways. We are going to have some building works coming up and we want to reduce stress as best we can. Brie will hide but will probably spend most of her time outside, Misty will be inquisitive but will spray in the house and attack Brie (if she can find her).
My thoughts are to either, set up a hiding area/litter tray upstairs away from the building where they can hide along with using feliway to try and keep them calm, or taking Misty to a cattery for the couple of weeks of work. Brie can't be taken to the cattery as she is slightly behind on her vaccines and partly related to the T-1000 so disintegrates through your fingers when you try to pick her up before disappearing (hence she is late for her vaccine). Any thoughts?

[Pingu]

Cats in cattery if possible.

[Mrs Pingu]

+1. You need to get better at boxing Brie up, sorry.
Our experience of Feliway is that it does feck all.

[Jaded]

We found that normal Feliway is best to stop the cats doing things, like scratching carpets.

Feliway friends is supposed to stop them glaring at each other, but it didn't work/

[Rod Marton]

A couple of years ago we had six months of building work and Catticus was not worried by it at all. Though apart from a dislike of strangers (and builders!) he is not a very nervous cat and also highly inquisitive. So he enjoyed investigating the changes every evening after the builders had left. He would have found a cattery much more stressful than the building work, as I said he dislikes strangers and is also highly territorial. But he is descended from a line of semi-feral barn cats and this is what you would expect.

[Edd]

Thanks everyone. We're chatting to some nearby catteries to see what they are like to hopefully get them in there. It is the kitchen/dining/utility rooms that are being done, which is where their food, water litter trays and cat flap are, so going with the stress of a cattery is probably going to be less than the stress of strangers and a constantly changing landscape. We've found that feliway works to an extent for us and will probably use it to take the edge of the change when they are back

[Kim]

Many years ago my parents had an extra 50% added to the back of their house.  We had two very inquisitive indoor cats.  The initial earthworks, foundation laying and most of the new brickwork went up without interfering with the existing house, and served as high quality cat TV for the duration.  The knocking-through and joining up took part while we were away on holiday for two weeks, with the cats in a cattery.  The builders (who were excellent builders in everything but their choice of two-stroke-powered cement mixer, which they parked outside my window and started up at morning o'clock for weeks on end) put up temporary partitions to keep cats from investigating the new rooms until the plastering had been done and there was a full complement of floorboards.  After that it was just a case of locking them in a spare bedroom with food and litter tray while decorators and electricians were in and out with materials.