We recently used the house and pet-sitting platform Trusted Housesitters to secure company for our cats during a 10-day trip to Long Island. We’ve tried leaving them with bottomless bowls of food and water, 24-hr home access through the cat door, and daily visits from a trustworthy 11-year old. This works fine for our obese and genial ginger cat Zeb, but not for Jazzy.
We adopted Jazzy when she was two years old, and there was a fairly steep learning curve required to figure out her various “needs”. As with certain cats, her needs were not many, nor were they unreasonable, but they were opaque. And when Jazzy’s needs were not met she would either attempt to re-home herself within a 1-mile radius, or pee in certain favored corners of the house.
And there’s nothing like the smell of cat pee to ruin your day.
This was a difficult period, and we navigated it with much effort and research, as well as some help from a Pet Psychic. We eventually sorted out that Jazzy required:
soft food
reassurance that she was loved, and that this was her home
I solved the lingering cat-pee smell with an enzyme-based spray called Kids'n’Pets, which is probably the only branded cleaning product that I keep in the house. Just a few squirts and your problem is solved! The food, as well, was a simple solution. The reassurance took a bit more work, but she immediately responded to my invitations to be my “special helper” around and outside the house.
“Jazzy, I have some gardening to do, will you come and be my Special Helper?”
“Mrow!”
It soon became clear that, unlike most cats who prefer people don’t look at them, Jazzy needed to be “seen”.
But despite these efforts over several years, and Jazzy’s high comfort and confidence level within the home and family, if we go on vacation and attempt to leave her with daily “check-ins”, rather than a proper overnight cat-sitter, she quickly re-homes herself. The first time we tried this she ended up in a Facebook post (living with a nurse’s aide 3/4 of a mile away). The second time she was kept a block away, by an angry neighbor who thought that we had left town and left her to fend for herself (a reasonable assumption, as she had spent an entire evening yowling on his front porch).
So now we get cat sitters, and in order not to pay money for them (which can REAAAAAALY add up), we use Trusted Housesitters, which pairs travelers looking for free accommodation, with pet owners looking for free pet care. It is review-driven, so very easy to find vetted, competent pet sitters appropriate for one’s specific needs.
The sit went well, and afterwards we provided the platform with our review of the sitters, and they provided their review of us - five glowing stars from all directions: communication, friendliness, etc. Except for a four-star rating from them for our “cleanliness”, which stood out a bit, as it was the only category not rated a “five”.
Now, a year ago, this would not have bothered me. In fact, I would have seen it as a win: “four stars - hey, nice work!”. But being that I have since developed self-awareness around housekeeping, this sub-par review stood out to me as something of a red flag.
What had they seen?
We swept, dusted and vacuumed, and cleaned the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the kitchens, the fridge - no crumbs, no slime behind the faucets, crisp, clean sheets… what had we missed?
I reached out to them, explaining as best I could that I wanted them to list the specific things that they had encountered that they considered not “clean”, and that they would be doing me a favor by providing this. Helpfully, they obliged, noting:
both bathrooms, bed and kitchen were “5-star”
the baseboards and window trim were dirty, by their standards
some windows were dirty as well
they felt the need to vacuum before unpacking
there were egg shells on the kitchen chairs
the back porch couch cushions had “a lot” of dog hair, so they chose not to use the couch
This is all VERY USEFUL information to a home-improvement blogger, as it reveals what people see - and what people don’t see.
The baseboards and window trim, I put into the category of Things I Don’t See. Until I start regularly cleaning trim, the grimy trim is something that I honestly overlook. But to someone who cleans their trim, they will see the grime. So now I add that to the things that I will keep clean (or at the very least, clean before a house sit).
The windows, I put into the category of Big Projects We Haven’t Gotten Around To. Our antique windows are in need of being not only cleaned, but scraped and re-pointed. A squirt of windex on the inside windows will not make a bit of a difference. This is a job that is both indoor and outdoor, requiring products and tools and ladders. And very heavy sets of decades-old storm windows and screens only complicate the matter. But yesterday my brave husband - in the wake of our sitters’ feedback - performed this job on one window (he estimates one, maybe two with help, can be done per day.) Here is the difference between a dirty window of the sort that the pet sitters encountered, and a clean window after three-hours of work (minus the smears around the woodwork, which will get scraped off in a week or so after the glazing putty cures):
We’ve put off this project, and lived with these windows for so long that we take it for granted that our view is naturally cloudy - a subtle powdered effect. Of course, now that one window is clean, the rest will look dirty. Guess I know what my husband and I will be working on for the next two weeks…
The vacuuming and the dog hair on the back porch cushions, I put into the category of Things That Wouldn’t Typically Bother Someone, But Do Bother Certain People. We had swept and vacuumed before their arrival - though with four animals, some pet hair will re-settle or be overlooked. But I don’t think that most people would notice that level of hair/dust on the floor. I base this on their decision not to sit on the back porch cushions, which they deemed too covered with dog hair. This is the state of the back porch cushions, as they encountered them:
I truly do not consider that to be an amount of hair worth cleaning - never mind something that would cause someone to not want to sit down. But, as they say in the industry… the customer is always right! So, vacuuming the back porch cushions will be added to the list of things to do before the next pet sit.
(I wonder how many stars they would have given four months ago, before I replaced the cushions?)
The egg shells on the kitchen chairs I honestly have no explanation for, nor any excuse. I don’t doubt that they were there, but since I wipe off the chairs every morning, I can assure you that they were new arrivals, rather than permanent residents.