Yesterday, after a long day of dog walking and cat sitting dogs and cats in the Lakes Region, I walked into my last Vacation Cat Care visit to care for cats Muffin and Sox while their family is on vacation abroad. As soon as I unlocked the door and got into the entry-way, I heard to sound of water dripping. The type of sound you don’t want to hear inside a house. I thought to myself, “Please let that be the ice melting outside that I am hearing dripping.” As soon as I removed my boots I walked towards the sound and saw that, indeed, it was ice dripping outside. Not only was the ice dripping outside, but it was also coming into the house around the frame of the slider. I jumped into action!
Professionalism & Emergency Preparedness Save the Day
Due to our professionalism and emergency preparedness preparation, several things were already in place that made my job much easier:
Towels
First, I went and got towels to mop up the small lake that was starting to accumulate. This is just one of the many reasons we ask you in your online profile to indicate where the towels are in your house. We want to be able to easily find them when we need them. Even better, we want to have the ability to leave your house as clean as we found it, or even cleaner.
Online Client Scheduling System
Next, I was able to check the notes from the morning visit in our online scheduling software to see if the sitter that visited in the morning had to open the slider door for any reason. We have two policies in place to make sure all of our sitters and managers are on the same page at each house we visit. The first is for the cat sitters and dog walkers to leave a note on the visit for the next sitter to see if anything out of the ordinary occurs. The second is for the cat sitters and dog walkers to call the office if they notice any type of emergency. Since neither of those had happened, I was pretty confident that the morning cat sitter had not seen anything unusual or opened the back slider for any reason. Just to be safe, I called her to make sure. With that cleared up, I moved on to getting help to fix the situation.
Emergency Contact
I tried to call the client but was unable to reach her. I pulled up the client’s profile in our online scheduling software. Since we collect all important information at our complimentary initial meeting, I was easily able to call the client’s emergency contact listed on her profile. Once I explained the situation, the emergency contact was kind enough to send her husband over with some extra towels. By the time he got there, I had already laid out all the towels I could locate, as well as, buckets under the 4 or 5 drips around the slider. One of the rugs was wet, so I hung that up to dry. The second rug had been spared from the water so far, so I rolled that up and got it out of harm’s way. The husband assessed the situation and decided it could wait until morning. He said they had already left a voicemail for the handyman.
After several conversations back and forth throughout the night with the client and the emergency contact, it was agreed that the handyman would come by in the morning to shovel the snow off of the roof. By the time I arrived for the morning Vacation Cat Care visit, he was there hard at work. Almost all of the snow had been shoveled and the dripping around the frame had stopped. The 10 or so towels that had been laid out were sopping wet. All that was left to do was clean up the mess inside. I wiped up the water, washed, dried and folded the towels, and put the rugs back down. By the time the client gets home, everything will look just as she left it…nice and clean! Exactly how you want to return from a vacation!
We Watch More Than Just Your Pets!
Professional Cat Sitters and Dog Walkers watch more than just your pets! We keep an eye on your home, too, to make sure everything is running smoothly. If this had been a once a day cat visit, I would not have caught the drip so quickly and the client likely would have had a small lake in their entryway. With 24 hours of water accumulating there is no telling what might have happened.
No Extra Fees
As a bonus, because we do not charge by time for dog walking and cat sitting, this client will not come home to an extra bill. If we charged by time, as most pet sitting companies do, this client would be coming home to a bill for the extra 3 hours of time Homeward Bound spent taking care of the situation. Our prices include all the extras:
- Medication Administration
- Extra Pets
- Emergencies
- Bringing in Mail
- Watering Plants
If you want peace of mind next time you travel, contact us to customize a Vacation Cate Care routine for your cat!