What your pet sitter actually needs to know

The handover usually happens in a doorway with a taxi waiting. Food's in the cupboard, she's had her breakfast, thanks so much, back Sunday.

Then something happens on Thursday, and the person looking after your animal discovers how much they were not told.

Here is the list. It takes fifteen minutes to write once, and it works for the next sitter too.

The half people remember#

Feeding, in amounts, not scoops. "One scoop, twice a day" means nothing — scoops differ. Write grams, or photograph the bowl filled correctly. Say what they're fed, whether anything is soaked or warmed, and what they absolutely must not have.

Medication as a sentence, not a name. What it is, how much, when, how it goes in, and — the bit that gets left out — what to do if a dose is missed or spat out. That is the question that actually gets asked at eleven at night.

The routine's shape. Roughly when they eat, walk and sleep. Animals do not need the clock respected to the minute, but a cat who is normally fed at seven and is still waiting at ten is a cat behaving strangely, and the sitter will not know that is unusual.

Where everything is. Lead, harness, food, treats, litter, spare litter, the carrier, the towels you don't mind ruining.

The half people forget#

Your vet, and the emergency vet — they are usually not the same. Write both: practice name, address, telephone. Out of hours, most practices divert somewhere else, and finding that out during an emergency costs the exact minutes that matter.

Permission to treat, and a number. This is the important one. If your animal needs treatment while you are unreachable, a vet will want to know who is authorising it and who is paying. A short note — "I authorise [name] to consent to veterinary treatment for [pet] up to [amount]; contact me at [number]" — left with the sitter and mentioned to your practice removes a delay that has cost animals dearly. Pick a figure you are genuinely comfortable with, and say what should happen if the bill would exceed it.

The microchip number, and who it is registered to. If your animal goes missing on day two, that number is the first thing anyone asks for, and it is worth being in the sitter's pocket rather than in a drawer in the house they cannot get into.

A recent photograph. Not a beautiful one. A clear, plain, whole-animal picture that shows their markings, taken this year. It is what a lost-pet post needs, and the good photographs are rarely the useful ones.

The alarming thing that is normal. Every animal has one. The dog who screams at the vacuum. The cat who vomits after eating too fast. The one who hides for the first six hours in any new arrangement. Write it down and you save your sitter a panicked call — or worse, a vet visit for something you would have shrugged at.

A second human. Somebody local who has a key, knows the animal, and can be reached if you are on a plane. If your sitter's own emergency happens mid-week, this is the only thing that helps.

What not to bother with#

Long biographies. Preferences the animal does not actually have. Anything you are writing because it makes you feel like a conscientious owner rather than because somebody will need it at nine on a Wednesday evening.

Keep it to one page. A list nobody reads is worse than a short list somebody does.

Say what you have decided#

The pattern behind all of it: decide in advance, in writing, the things you would otherwise be asked to decide by telephone from another country. How much to spend. Who consents. When to call a vet rather than wait. What "she seems off" should trigger.

You will probably never need any of it. The fifteen minutes buys the version of the week where the decision was already made.

None of this needs an app#

A note in the kitchen drawer does the job, and did for decades.

We built sharing into mypet care for the case where the drawer isn't enough — the sitter isn't in your house, or there are three of you and nobody is sure whether the tablet was given. You invite whoever is helping, and you choose whether each of them can only look, or tick things off and add to the record. The medication list is not a text message anybody has to scroll back to find.

But the writing-it-down is the part that helps. Where you keep it matters much less.