How to Get Fired as a Cat Sitter

Short of Killing the Cats

Yes. This is mostly a rant.

tl;dr: Don't assume any job is as easy as you think it is? Make a point of using/advocating alternate communication channels when at an impasse? Emphasize the hell out of looking at instructions?

***

Ahead of the holidays, I thought we'd bring our kitten, Seymour, with us and leave Lucinda at home, with a sitter to check in on her every few days.

We ended up leaving both cats together with a sitter, though, because they get along so well and Seymour had adjusted to his new home in no time flat.

For all the non-cat owners (and especially for dog owners) out there, cat sitting is a very low bar: top off the food and water, change the litter, and pet them or play with them for a while if they want. (Cats frequently hide when unfamilair people are around.) It's house sitting with a couple of extra chores thrown in and the remote possibility of needing to take a cat to the vet in an emergency.

This doesn't require daily hours-long visits because you don't have to walk cats or worry about them going nuts and chewing up everything in the house.

And so, contrary to my very careful past screening of baby sitters, which included interviews and checking with references, my hiring process was relatively lax: We hired a young adult we heard from a mutual aquaintance would be interested.

Nothing seemed off when the sitter came by to pick up the house key and meet the cats. I showed her around and told her what I needed done. I told her I'd have a list in the kitchen in case she needed her memory refreshed about anything. Our (and the vet's) contact information would be there in case she needed it. She'd also be checking mail, bringing in packages, and a few other minor things to secure the house and make it look occupied for the eight days we'd be away.

We came back to zero food or water in the bowls and litter that looked like it hadn't been changed at all. Thanks to security cameras (which keep coming in handy in ways I'd never imagine), I knew while we were away that she was coming at the requested 2-3 day intervals, but I kept having to reset the home alarm remotely because she wasn't doing that ahead of leaving.

It was insanely hard to arrange a time for her to come, give me my key back, and get paid, despite her having a phone and both of our numbers. It was more than two weeks later, after she apparently blew off my texts -- but further inquiry showed that she thought I was ignoring hers. ("He left me on red." A case of iPhones not playing nicely with Android? This wouldn't be the first time.)

The icing on the cake came when I (finally) settled.

"The only thing I forgot to do was take out the trash," she said.

"Oh, that's fine. Trash day was on Christmas anyway, and we were back right before the next one."

Where I had once marveled at her selective reading of my instructions, I now knew she hadn't read them at all, since I had excused her from taking out the trash after realizing when that was.

What did we learn?

Two and a half weeks later, I feel like I paid a hefty ransom for my house key and the knowledge that I need to find a cat sitter ahead of our next prolonged trip. See the tl;dr above for what I have been able to glean from this bizarre episode, and feel free to make other suggestions as to what might have gone wrong.

-- CAV