Excellent carrier for reluctant cats!
I bought this due my cat's loathing of the traditional plastic hard-sided carrier I'd been using since she was a kitten. She hates going to the vet, so getting her into the old carrier was always a real battle of wills (and sometimes claws and teeth...). With this carrier, it's a LOT easier! There are various options for unzipping the carrier, including a "door" at the front and a slit across the top, but the easiest way for me to get the cat in is to unzip the whole lid from the bed, plonk the cat in the bed, then swiftly place the lid on top and zip around to keep her in. The black mesh in the lid means the cat can see out, which seems to keep her calmer, and there is plenty of room for an average cat - much more so than in standard carriers. The cat certainly seems to find the trip to the vet a lot less distressing in this carrier (although she still hates the vet himself with the fiery heat of a thousand suns) - there's no more yowling all the way there. The carrier lid unzips and can be taken off to leave a nice little cat bed with a fleecy lining, which my cat naturally ignores completely, but since the main reason I bought this was to make trips in the carrier less stressful for both me AND the cat, I don't really mind as it does the job on that front. The Sandy carrier is expensive, but if you have a cat who is difficult to wrangle into a carrier, it's worth the extra cost.