Asking a friend who has done petsitting before

Back in January 2023, Jonas did some Googling to find out more about housesitting platforms, while I messaged my friend Nina Sodin who has done it before. She sent me two chapters from her future book (in Hebrew) and gave us some personalized advice from her experience.

One tip was to join local housesitting/petsitting Facebook groups if you’re looking to housesit in one specific country. Also, some countries like Poland have their own housesitting websites – in Polish – to connect pet parents with pet sitters.

Another tip was to try to find housesits via friends or friends of friends. Jonas and I actually received one offer like that from a colleague of my mom’s but had to decline it because there were no cats/pets to take care of, just plants and the house and we would have had to pay for gas/water/electricity.

This was an interesting offer, though, because it made us think very hard about why we want to do housesitting after traveling together full-time for more than seven years and paying for accommodation everywhere. Because let’s face it, Jonas and I are looking to spend time with cats. We’re not doing it for the free accommodation.

Lastly, Nina spoke about online housesitting platforms, such as Trusted Housesitters. That is really the big platform, the Airbnb of petsitting. The platform isn’t free to use – the lowest yearly fee will set you back €10 or US$11 per month – but it has a lot of users and the chances of finding a sit in a cool country are quite high. But Nina said it’s vital to build a good profile on these platforms before you get chosen.

Choosing Trusted Housesitters (premium membership)

While still traveling in Madagascar, I downloaded a bunch of housesitting apps on my phone to see what it’s about, but none of them were good or intuitive to use. Meanwhile, Jonas looked for a Trusted Housesitters (THS) membership. It is possible to create a free account on Trusted Housesitters to look at open sits, but you can’t apply to any. In the hope that we’d get chosen for a catsit soon, we looked at the paid membership options. The options were: basic (€119), standard (€149), and premium (€239) without a promo link. Jonas found more ways to reduce the price, see below.

We ended up choosing the premium membership. Even if we’d just find one catsit for a week, money-wise, that would already be worth the price not counting the tremendous joy we receive from being around a cat. In my opinion, the Premium membership shows we mean business and that we don’t look at housesitting as a way to save money on accommodation.

Filling in our profile

After paying the big money and getting access to our Premium membership account, we immediately began filling in our profile. I got all the pictures out of us taking care of Monday and rescue kitten Limon Confit in Mauritius. Together we filled in the fields of pet care experience and our motivation for housesitting. We know that if you don’t have references, the most important thing is to have a profile that’s completely filled in.

There’s a possibility to link to our Airbnb and LinkedIn profiles. While I don’t think LinkedIn is that useful for when you go live in other people’s homes, Airbnb certainly is. We also have about 100 positive Airbnb reviews, so this plays to our strengths.

There’s also a field for ‘external references’, which can be anyone outside the platform. We sent this to someone we rented apartments from in Mauritius with a message via WhatsApp to let her know what this was about. She sent us a review rather quickly to verify that we’re real people. Although it was not about pet care, it was still good to have.

Around this time, my sister who lives in the Netherlands also was looking for a housesitter for a long weekend. We looked at the dates and it would fit when we’re back in Europe after traveling in Africa. So our first scheduled catsit would be in the Netherlands and not via THS. This is good because family is an easy way to get some catsitting experience. My sister would also write an external reference for us after we took care of her cat Ulicoten (main picture📸 of article) for a few days.

Now that our profile was the bare minimum complete, we set up notifications for catsitting assignments. We cast a wide net; no specific country, just a map search on a zoom level that includes almost all of Europe and northern Africa. Then we applied our filters: cats, fish, poultry, and small pets. No dogs—for now; maybe we want to do that in the future or when there’s a filter for small dogs only.

Our search also filtered for housesits longer than a week and with the starting date for the search set when we return to Europe in late February 2023. It’s possible to set up a starting date without a final date, which is great.

Applying for our first sit in France

Within a few hours, we got a bunch of notifications—mostly in the United Kingdom. While we had a good time looking at cat pictures, we didn’t have a hard plan to travel to the UK. But it was good to learn about all the different kinds of profiles that are out there and how much effort the pet parents put in.

Then a few days later when we arrived in Ethiopia, we received a notification for a catsit in southern France: one beautiful black cat named Toffee, above the age of 10. We read the entire profile and the reviews from previous housesitters, looked through the pictures of the house and of the adorable void, and discussed if we can make it work with the dates (yes). The only question mark was the fact that they had ticked the box ‘Sitters Need A Car’, though the profile had a detailed description of how to get to their house by train. In our experience, car owners often aren’t super aware of how doable things are without a car. We decided to click Apply to sit.

Together, we wrote an application to take care of Toffee for two weeks. We included the tidbit that we wanted to go to southern France to go to Andorra either way. The profile also mentioned something about preferably spending the majority of nights at their home in a small village and not in the big city nearby. We found this a bit strange but mentioned that we wouldn’t spend nights away. Besides taking care of the cat, we’d love to just work remotely and enjoy the area. We also mentioned that we’d take care of my sister’s cat Ulicoten before their sit.

We ended the message with our willingness to do a video call.

Our first application video call

Two days later, we received a message back. The pet parents of Toffee had read through our profile and liked it. They had multiple applicants for this sit as well, so now they were doing video calls to see who is the best match. They asked us when we’d be available for a Zoom call. We said either still on the same day or two days later. They replied quickly as well and said it would be better two days later.

Before the call, we prepped our hotel room in Addis Ababa to look a little cozier. We tried some different spots in the room to see where we’d have the best light. We really wanted to get this sit, even though the chances of getting it were pretty low being new to the platform.

All of us were on time. We introduced ourselves and listened to their holiday plans. They had questions about how we’d get to southern France and we had questions about Toffee’s little cat habits. The vibe was really good, but they still had concerns about our lack of a motor vehicle in case Toffee has a veterinary emergency. I said my cousin in the Netherlands is a vet, so I could call her and ask first if something is of concern. I also reassured them that we could walk or hitchhike to the vet if there’s also not a neighbor around.

Afterward, we had no idea how well we had done. The pet parents had also told us that when they searched for a catsitter last year via THS, they received applications from many generic pet people. But this time they had only applications from cat people like ourselves. While that is good for them, it does make the competition harder for us—especially if the other four applicants have intra-platform reviews already.

Now all we could do is wait.

Getting our first sit (and losing it)

Three days later, while on the bus from Addis Ababa to Bahir Dar, Jonas spotted a notification from THS on his phone. He told me about it and asked if I wanted to read it together. I told him I couldn’t stand the nerves so he should read it. His face immediately changed from concern to delight and said, “Iris, we got it!” and read the message aloud:

I couldn’t believe it! The first sit we applied for we… got? We’re going to have a Toffee for two weeks?!

Once we replied to the message, Jonas offered me to be the one to accept the housesit. I opened up the catsit confirmation request on my phone and pressed accept. It’s official now: we’re going to be catsitters!

We immediately received access to their THS welcome guide. That’s where pet parents get down to the nitty-gritty about the pet and home care. Upon arrival in Bahir Dar, Jonas set up a WhatsApp chat with Toffee’s pet parents for easier communication. We also received additional guides from the pet parents via email.

Everything went well and we applied for more catsits in the UK after southern France in early May. The idea was to travel to France, Andorra, Euskadi, Galicia, and then take the ferry to southern England. England is where the majority of catsits are at. We got a lot of rejections from people in the UK. I don’t know why. Sometimes they didn’t even send us a message. We also had one video call with someone in southern England with a Maine Coon, but she went with another sitter.

Then in February, one day after we returned to Europe, we sent Toffee’s pet parents a message to let them know we were doing travel planning to France. We asked which day it would be best to arrive at their home. They responded very quickly to our question but also said something personal had come up that might throw a spanner in the works. Two days later, we had a call with them to discuss this. In the end, they had to cancel their holiday and therefore also our catsit. But if there are future travel plans, they’ll first contact us to take care of Toffee.

Getting our first catsits (for real)

Before we lost that one, we had a very good plan to travel through Europe to Andorra and Iceland. On one of our last days in Ethiopia, we had another video call from a hotel in Addis Ababa with a couple with two cats living in Stavanger, Norway. We vibed really well with them and they chose us to take care of their sweet tuxedo boys named Sherlock and Dr. Watson in June/July. This was a few days before we lost Toffee. Our plan was roughly France → Andorra → Spain → UK → Norway → Faroe Islands → Iceland → ?

Losing the first housesitting gig was of course quite an emotional rollercoaster. And it was at this point that our applications went completely off the rails. Just rogue. We sent out 43 (!) applications between January and May 2023. During that time we had zero THS platform reviews, though we did receive one from my sister after taking care of Ulicoten twice and one character reference from Nina. We also updated our profile with pictures of us taking care of Ulicoten.

Out of 43 applications in 11 different European countries over 4.5 months of applying we had:

• 8 video calls (19% of applications)
• 5 catsit agreements (12% of applications, 63% of video calls)
• 4 catsits that went through (9% of applications, 80% of agreed sits)

Chronologically, the catsits we had planned were:

• Moritz in Germany
• Willie in Switzerland
• Ziggy, Azar, Zephyr, and Ari in Switzerland
• Sherlock and Dr. Watson in Norway

Our first sit with Moritz in Freiburg im Breisgau in Baden-Württemberg was absolutely amazing. We loved how much his personality opened up during the two weeks he was in our care. As this was our first official sit via THS, we were also very nervous about getting a (positive) first review. However, since we handed over the care of Moritz to two other catsitters, we still had to wait another two weeks before receiving a review from Moritz’ parents.

After taking care of Moritz, we immediately updated our THS profile with new info and a few pictures (with permission). We also drafted a review.

Writing + receiving our first THS reviews

We waited to post our raving review of taking care of Moritz for two weeks until the pet parents were back from their holidays. This was to make sure that they’d get a notification when they’re back home and in the right headspace to do such a thing; it’s best not to bother people while they’re on holiday.

Meanwhile, we were in Switzerland taking care of a young orange boy named Willie for four days. We tried to review them right after we left for Sion, but THS only declares a housesit over the day after the official end date. The next morning, we saw that Willie’s parents beat us to it: they’d written us an absolutely riveting review.

We also posted our review of Willie’s parents and a few days later posted our review of Moritz’ parents and sent them a message to ask how their return has been. Before we knew it, we had two THS reviews after two wonderful catsitting experiences.

Our next sit was again in Switzerland with four cats. This sit with three Sphynx cats and one fluffy type was also absolutely amazing. With three housesitting gigs up our sleeve, we concluded that this is indeed Our Thing™.

After Switzerland, we returned to the Netherlands to take care of Ulicoten again, this time for 2.5 weeks. And after the Netherlands, we flew from Amsterdam to Stavanger to take care of the two tuxedo cats. Sherlock and Dr. Watson were our longest-standing catsit via THS, having been arranged in late February and started four months later in late June. For comparison, our shortest waiting time between application and doing the sit was 3 weeks with the four cats in Switzerland.

All catsits our catsits yielded positive THS reviews, which we reciprocated.

Has it become easier since we had our first THS review?

After the four cats in Switzerland in May, we didn’t apply for any catsits until late June while we were in Norway. This was because despite us loving all the cats and catsits so much, it is also something that really interferes with our own travel plans. That is logical; the pet parents dictate the dates and places where housesitting help is needed, not us.

Since our first four THS catsits, we have become a lot more mindful of our applications. Jonas set up five ‘saved searches’ on THS without end dates for the following locations: the Channel Islands, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, South East Europe, and Finland + the Baltics. The first three are country-specific while the latter two are a map snapshot. That’s why with Finland + the Baltics, we still receive notifications for northern Germany despite us not being interested in going to Hamburg right now.

With these saved searches set up, we received only minimal notifications. That plus the fact that we’ve become masters at writing applications is also why the comparison of our success rate before reviews and after reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. Of these manageable notifications, we applied for three more catsits: one in Guernsey in the Channel Islands, another in Cyprus (South East Europe), and one in Estonia.

We immediately noticed with Guernsey that we were in the running for a lot longer; lots of pet parents reject easy-to-reject applicants in order to open up their spots for better candidates. There’s room for only five applicants with every sit to not swamp the pet parents with messages. In the end, the pet parents in Guernsey sent us a lovely rejection message saying they were looking for a female sitter since their cat is scared of (strange new) men. That’s very understandable, but also we would not have applied if their listing had mentioned they were only looking for solo female housesitters.

Guernsey was not meant to happen

The second application in Cyprus happened more than two weeks later. We already had a plan to go to Cyprus in autumn or winter anyway, so when we saw the dates it was perfect; Christmas and New Year’s. That’s our least favorite time to travel, so spending that time with a couple of cats seems wonderful.

We wrote a nice application for this housesitting gig and waited. In the evening, we received a message that the pet parents have seen our application and will take their time to look through all of them. Two days later, we received another message with further questions about our willingness to book flights to Cyprus, if their internet speed is good enough for us, and if we have driver’s licenses. We immediately replied and also suggested having a (video) call. A few minutes later, we received a reply with the question if we wanted to be their catsitters.

Wow, just like that! They sent out the housesitting confirmation request and we accepted. Jonas immediately created a WhatsApp group to stay in contact more easily. One hour after we got this sit, another one in Cyprus with overlapping dates popped up. As if all the people based there are planning their holidays at the same time.

And the latest, we applied for a catsit in Tallinn, Estonia. Since they were new to the platform, they didn’t see our application at first. Their first message to us was very positive, but we couldn’t do a call for more than a week because we went to Svalbard and were offline there. Despite the long wait, we had the call after our return to lower latitudes. During the call, they told us they had basically already chosen us based on our nice application and our reviews and asked us on the call if we were interested in the sit. We confirmed immediately and they sent the request shortly after the call.

In conclusion, we don’t have definitive proof that our THS reviews convinced Cyprus, but I’m fairly sure they read them. I don’t think they rejected applicants to open up new spots, so perhaps the competition just wasn’t that tough and they mostly had other people applying for the destination and the dates, not the pets. Still, the stats and one specific mention of our reviews so far say that with some positive THS reviews, we have one rejection and two acceptances, i.e. 67% of applications yield a positive result.

Lessons we’ve learned: Who gets a sitter, where are sits, and what’s the most important thing?

After spending so much time on THS looking for sits, communicating with people, and finally doing the catsits, we have learned quite some things. I’ll be focusing on the demographics, the locations, and the most important thing you can do to get a catsit via THS.

Who is looking for a housesitter?

First of all, the common denominator of pet parents on THS is people who truly love their pets. They want what’s best for them and don’t just abandon them while they go on holiday. They want their pets to be loved, fed, entertained, groomed, and given medicine on the pet’s usual schedule. Beyond that, I’ve learned about four major categories of pet parents on THS:

It’s a platform that’s mostly popular in the United Kingdom. Probably because it’s been founded there and if you’ve been to the UK, you know there are oodles of dogs there. However, the UK was also the toughest place to get a sit as non-UK-based sitters. Not sure why. Perhaps Brexit? Anyway, all profiles state that they prefer a housesitter over putting their cat in a cattery—a very British term. And they prefer to get a free petsitter over a paid one even though there are many professional petsitters in the UK.

In other countries, the number of pet parents on THS is much lower. But the demographic is still that most of these users hail from the UK, now living abroad such as in Spain, France, or Cyprus. They often chose to move to a remote and quiet location with sunshine. Many are older retired couples who must have been referred to THS by fellow Brits and not by a TikTok video. Since they are foreigners in a foreign country themselves, they have no qualms about inviting a foreigner into their house to take care of their pets. Professional petsitters might also be hard to find locally despite living there for years and having a network.

Then the third category of THS pet parents is expats/immigrants of any nationality. They often don’t have a neighbor or friend who can come over to take care of their pets. Their community is often limited to fellow transplants who also work very hard and don’t have time to give love and attention to their pets. They know that moving to a foreign country for work can be very stressful for humans and pets alike. They want to not stress out their pet (again) by putting them in a pet boarding kennel. For many, their pets are their emotional support anchor and they are very, very attached to their furbabies. They’re looking for a sitter with lots of attention for the pets and want to receive (daily) photos.

The final THS pet parent type is anyone else who doesn’t fit in the categories above; locals who just couldn’t find a neighbor or family member to do it, former travelers who have done housesitting before themselves, people who have stumbled upon THS via social media, etc. Our first housesit in Freiburg was like that: the pet parents usually had neighbors to take care of the majestic Moritz, but those neighbors had to move. The neighbors have a family member who could come take care of Moritz, but only for half the duration of their vacation. That family member and her partner are on THS as housesitters and referred the pet parents to THS to find housesitters (Jonas and I) for the other half of their vacation.

Where are the majority of housesits?

In short: expensive (Anglophone) countries.

If you’re thinking “Well duh, only rich pet owners can afford to go on vacation and Anglophone countries tend to be rich”, I don’t think it’s that simple. People still try to find someone offline most of the time from inside their own community. If that doesn’t work, people go to platforms like THS.

If we take out the UK – which is an expensive Anglophone country but also skews the data – the next one is the USA, followed by Australia. There are also many open sits in Canada and New Zealand.

But if we take out the Anglophone countries, we’re still left with mostly expensive countries: Switzerland, Norway, the UAE, sporadically in Japan, Taiwan, Iceland, and South Korea. The silence in Latin America, Southeast Asia (excluding Singapore), Africa (excluding South Africa), Central Asia, South Asia, and the MENA region (excluding the UAE) is deafening.

It makes sense that there are many housesits in expensive countries because that means that pet hotels and paid housesitters are often expensive as well. Having to pay for pet boarding in addition to your vacation can rack up costs significantly. But the THS exchange doesn’t only make sense as a cost-saving method for pet parents; accommodation for travelers is also expensive in expensive countries. Traveling housesitters such as us might not have considered going to Norway or Switzerland if we had to pay 100% of accommodation ourselves. It saves us hundreds of € per night in Switzerland, but only tens of € per night in Portugal.

Most housesits are in expensive countries

Then there’s the factor of urban versus rural housesits. There is not much of a pattern here, as there are many housesits that are very rural and then also many that are very urban. Sometimes, it’s hard to judge whether it’s one or the other as people input a city like Rome, but actually, it’s somewhere in the suburbs or a satellite town.

Urban sits get taken much quicker than rural ones, which makes sense; it’s easier to travel to a big city than to the countryside, more people search for sits in popular cities and towns around the world, and more housesitters have experience with city-friendly pets such as indoor cats and dogs rather than rural pets such as horses and sheep.

The few times we tried to apply for a catsit in Amsterdam, it was gone within two minutes. Amsterdam is notorious for being very expensive accommodation-wise. Meanwhile, some sits we’ve applied to in rural France can take days to reach its five-sitter capacity.

The only exception to this urban vs rural rule seems to be Iceland; no matter where it is in Iceland, far away from the capital in bumfuck nowhere, any petsit in Iceland will be gone in under one minute.

What is the one thing I should do to get a housesitting gig?

Be fast and clear in your communication. It’s that simple.

People with pets who want to go abroad have the stressful dilemma between booking their holiday or finding a petsitter first. It’s very stressful to be looking at airfare prices going up and the days counting down to your holidays while you’re not sure yet if anyone is coming to take care of your elderly cat. Being that person who can quickly reply that you’re willing to come over and commit to the dates makes you stand out over the ones that dilly-dally.

We’ve had it before that a pet parent chose us as their sitters despite our lack of reviews because their first choice stopped responding to messages. So don’t be that person. Also, take the communication off THS and onto something more reliable for both parties as soon as the sit is confirmed via THS; sometimes Jonas and I got logged out of THS on our phones and we’d not get notifications.

Once you have the sit confirmed, periodically check in with the pet parents at any major decision-making moment. Message them before you book your plane/train ticket to their sit. Ask them what time they are expecting you at their home to meet the pet and learn the pet’s routine. This all shows you’re committed to the task.

Note, I’ve never personally used these Facebook groups to find a catsit. There are risks involved with finding housesitting opportunities via Facebook since people can cancel on you last minute and there is no insurance coverage. They also have entry questions before you can join the group that aren’t really digital nomad-friendly, such as “Where do you live?”. And lastly, not all groups are of great quality since some are open groups full of spammers.

• House & Pet Sitting Community Groups—This page manages several location-based housesitting groups. At least the following:
  • House & Petsitting Norway
  • House & Pet Sitting Greece Σπίτι και κατοικίδια φροντίδα – Ελλαδα
  • International House & Pet Sitting
  • House & Pet Sitting Mexico
  • House & Pet Sitting Spain and Portugal
  • Hawaii House & Pet Sitting ~ Hawai’i
  • House & Pet Sitting New Zealand
  • House & Pet Sitting UK (United Kingdom)
  • Ranch & Farm House Sitting ~ USA
  • House & Pet Sitting Italy ~ Guarda Casa e Animali domestici in italia
  • House & Pet Sitting USA
  • Bermuda Bahamas Caribbean Grenada House & Pet Sitting
  • House & Pet Sitting Central & South America
  • House & Pet Sitting Canada
• Host a Sister—women-only travel group. But if see a housesitting offer and you’re a straight couple, you can mention you’re available for pet care with your male partner. Not all posts are about housesitting
• House Sitting Cafe
• Singapore Pet Sitting Volunteers
• Pet + House Sitting, Travel and Digital Nomads
• HOUSE SITTING AND PET SITTING—affiliated with HouseSitMatch
• Free House/Pet Sitting in Israel.—for pet care in Israel/Palestine
• House & Pet Sitting Switzerland—it does not seem to be affiliated with the community groups page mentioned before.
• You can find more house and petsitting groups on Facebook by typing in housesitting or petsitting with a location (which can be a specific city!) and then filtering the results for groups only

Note: we don’t have petsitting experience via these platforms. If you have experience with them, please comment below with your stories!

Cat in a Flat—free to join (for now). Available in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. You cannot search across countries and have to choose a country first before you’re shown any potential catsits. Also, it has a weird radius based on your home address, which seems weirdly not usable for digital nomads. So far I recommend using the website, but not the app since the latter is very buggy. It seems that the standard on this site is to charge pet parents for your petsitting services.

Housesitting Poland—a Polish-speaking platform that’s currently just a Facebook group named Housesitting i Houseswapping Polska. Free of charge.

Mind my House—a smaller platform that costs housesitters US$29 per year. They say it’s a global platform. From the housesitting perspective, they focus a lot on not paying for accommodation/cheap travel to lure us in. I think the focus should be the pets.

HouseSit Match—a website with fees for housesitters and homeowners alike. Housesitters pay £69 or £89 per year. The currency implies that you’ll mostly find UK-based petsits here.

PetBacker—available in 50 countries. It seems that homeowners pay for housesitting services. They also have an app.