New Pets and Pet Sitting Issues

I'm having a very difficult time posting today.  The next several days could be quite a challenge.  I got a new kitten over the weekend.  Her name is Mrs. Beasley.  She is very young and curious.  Meanwhile her "big brothers" currently resent her and are actually apparently very frightened by her.  After all she is nearly 5 inches tall and ways upwards of 14 oz.!  So they won't have anything to do with her.  That means her entertainment falls to me.  It's not easy keeping a 9 week old kitten entertained!  Sure, cat toys work for a while.  But then when it gets too quiet she begins to explore and she can really get herself into trouble pretty easily.  Wait, I hear hissing... be right back.  All is well.  She has discovered the stairs.  Since Jingle and Shiner are totally freaked out by her, they are staying upstairs.  So, when she makes her way to the top, they get slightly pissy.

So, anyway, that isn't what I was going to write about today.  My planned topic for today was to again touch on pet sitting while you travel.  I know I have talked about this before.  But since it's been a while and today it is top of mind, I thought I would do so again.  If you are fortunate enough to have pet grandparents to leave your furry four legged friends with while you are on vacation, you are a very lucky person.  For those of us who live far away from family what to do with the critters when you are away can be quite a conundrum.

You can rely on friends to come by once or twice a day.  But I hate asking friends to drive out of their way in unpredictable Dallas traffic just to come over and care for my cats especially when I know they are thinking....  They're CATS!  Just give them a fresh litter box and several bowls of food and water and they'll survive for a week on there own!!!!  I know and understand that.  But they are MY cats and my cats are pretty spoiled from having lived with me all these years.  That means they have come to expect things. And when they don't get what they expect, it can be a little traumatic for them.

Additionally, last year the vet put the two older cats on a canned food diet.  He doesn't want them to have ANY dry food at all.  I have to admit that I cheat and give them some dry food each day, but it is limited.  He says that dry food is very high in carbs and is making them overweight.  Both of my adult cats weigh between 12 and 13 pounds.  He wants each of them to lose 1/2 a pound.  Quite frankly, I think they look perfect.  But he says you should be able to feel their ribs easily when you pet them and there should be an indention where their belly is.  To be perfectly honest, if I were in perfect shape, I might be a little more concerned with my cats near obesity of 1/2 a pound too much weight on their frames.  But since I myself could stand to lose the equivalent of a 3rd grader, I think their 1/2 a pound is okay.  By the way, the vet could stand to lose a 5th grader....  Just sayin'....

So the canned food thing twice a day means two visits from friends OR I have the option of removing food from the cans, portioning it out into single servings for each cat and putting it in ziplock bags labeled with their names and freezing it.  Then when my friend comes over to feed the cats, they can give them one can of fresh food portioned out and they each get a portion of the frozen food.  By the time it thaws they are ready for their second meal of the day.  That has been working well.  But then when I took them in for shots last week, he suggested that I feed them the same amount but go to three feedings a day rather than two spreading it out more.  I swear this man is trying to make cat feeding a full time job!  This suggestion was a result to me fessing up to the fact that I give them dry treats during the day when they come up to me while I'm working and tug on my shirt with their claws.  My cats are already high maintenance enough thanks to my spoiling them without any further help from the vet.  So I've decided against the vets advice to continue giving them dry treats and keep the feeding schedule as is.  Most of the reason for maintaining the feeding schedule is to make things easier when I travel.  Because let's face it, I work 10 feet from my kitchen.  Getting up in the middle of the day walking to the kitchen and feeding cats is not that difficult.  But I travel way too much for this to work out when I am away from home.

When I don't want to take advantage of friendships and that happens a couple of times a year usually, I use a pet sitter.  I don't mind telling you that the pet sitting racket seems to be pretty lucrative.  With the service I use, a single visit for one pet is $22.  Now, I must say that when they come over, they spend a minimum of 30 minutes.  They will do everything from picking up mail and papers and scooping litter boxes to watering plants, filling bird feeders and sweeping up any messes the pets have made.  Many times I have come home from vacation to a cleaner house than I left.  I guess the pet sitter assumed that no self respecting human would ever leave the mess I did, so the cats must have done it.  Oops!  They add three dollars for each additional pet.  So, for the last several years, I have been paying $25 a visit.  I used to have them come over twice a day which meant I was paying $50 a day for cat sitting.  Now, granted that is less expensive than kennel fees for two cats.  But it still adds up.

Mrs. Beasley found a spot on the stair closest to my head to sleep while I work.  :-)

I mean if I go on a 7 night cruise, I'm paying $350 for pet sitting.  You can get an inside cabin on a ship for $350 in some cases.  So, I'm immediately thinking... maybe I could take them on a cruise with me and get them their own cabin for about the same amount.  Then I could go visit them each day....  Nah!  That would never work.  I don't want to pay $350 extra for my vacation and still deal with scooping litter boxes, cleaning cat dishes and portioning food a couple of times a day.  Then there is also the guilt feeling I would get each time I left their cabin and locked them inside while I went out to the deck or off on an excursion.  They do allow service dogs on ships.  You have to have a service dog certification for them.  I'm sure there must be service cats.  Right?  I wonder if they certify them.  Then the cats could travel for free.  Of course convincing the cruise line that I required 3 service cats could be a little tough.  And again, you would have to deal with cat food and cat litter all cooped up in that tiny little cruise ship cabin.  Ugh!

So I guess adding $350 to the price of a 7 night cruise to include cat sitting isn't such a high price to pay for knowing that I get a week off from litter box duties, they are well taken care of and my friends don't have to come over every day to take care of my spoiled cats.  I have, in the last year gotten that price down to $175 by reducing the visits to 1 per day by freezing food before I leave.  Of course, now with 3 cats that price will go up by a total of $21 for 7 days.  I hope this new little girl is worth $3 a day!