What does it mean to be a cat sitter?
This happens to me all the time.
‘What are you doing in Ireland?’
‘I live here.’
‘You work?’
‘Er..yes.’ (I always wonder if people are asking me this as in ‘are you on welfare? Taking advantage of my country?’ but I could be over-sensitive…)
‘What do you do?’
(I thought to myself, ‘oh gawd…not again.’)
‘Er…I am self employed.’
‘Oh what is that about?’
(‘Here we go again…’)
‘I have a ‘cat business’. I am a cat sitter.’
Then the reactions are usually one of the followings:
– ‘You are WHAT?’
– ‘Can you make money doing that?’ (I have a separate post to address this question. FOLLOW my blog if you want to know more.)
– ‘What do you actually do?’
So today, once and for all, I will tell you what does it mean to be a cat sitter.
It is A LOT more than just putting down food in the cat’s bowl…
Accounting
Every business need to keep books. A lot of people like to use an accountant. I, however, am a strong believer that small family business like Maow Care should try to find time to do their own accounts. (A post on how to do your accounts will be up for SMOB series. FOLLOW MY BLOG!)
That way you can understand the cash flow of your business better. Plus, it’s quite expensive to pay for an accountant for a small business like mine. So I do my accounts.
Since I have a new baby recently, I am SOOO behind…
Training
If you are a professional pet carer would it be sitter, groomer, trainer, etc, you SHOULD have regular training. There are new stuff coming out in the animal science world every year. I am surprise to see a lot of professional pet carers in Ireland are not actively seeking continuous education.
I suppose it’s a two-way issue. Most customers probably don’t see the importance of that and don’t value the time a sitter spend to learn more. As a result, some sitters might feel, ‘why bother?’
I have an extensive ‘cat library’ at home for my own use.
I attend cat conference regularly in the UK. I am a curious person by nature and I genuinely love cats, I want to learn as much about them as possible!
I also regularly seek education on the ‘business side of things’. Accounting, marketing, social media, etc. I have no formal business training, so it is important for me to educate myself to help run my business better.
Operation (actual cat sitting)
Now is the fun part – the actual minding of cats. You might not know, but there are soo sooo much more than just putting food out.
As a cat sitter, we are entering people’s home, we have to make sure to respect people’s privacy and make sure their home is secured. We have a lot of ‘trick of the trade’ in this business to ensure that.
Once we make sure the house is secured and cats are safe. We do the actual sitting. We follow customer’s instruction to feed cat, play with cat, change litter tray, give meds if needed, let cat out or let cat in, etc. To be honest, no two homes are the same, no two cats are the same. Every customer’s instruction are different! And I have taken care of close to a thousand cats! Take drinking device as an example, I have so far had, cat bowl, pint glass (half full, full to the beam, full but NOT to the beam), sink, bath, shower, bucket, fountain, etc. So being a cat sitter, one has to be very detail oriented to follow instruction to the T.
After each sitter, we keep a log to record what happened at the job in case customer ask us question later about a specific visit. We also send email or text message daily to report what happened at the job, so that customers can know their cats are fine.
We also follow up to make sure customers return home safety. In case of delay, we will cover extra days at the last minute notice. Sometimes, it might affect our previous engagement…
Key management is a huge part of this business. There are constantly about 100 keys I have to handle. Having a tidy and secure system to make sure all keys are label in code word is crucial.
We have to keep good record of customer profile and all other paper work customers hand in to us. I have to file them alphabetical and make sure to lock them safely in the file cabinet. There are so much personal information in these profiles that require high level of care and discretion.
Customer Service
Cat sitting, at the end of the day, is a customer service business. We provide a service to the human. We take good care of the cats of course, but making sure the human are crucial for the business to stay alive. Because, after all, the humans are the one who have the bank account, not the cats…(sadly…coz I think it will be easier to please cats, just bring treats! haha)
As a professional cat sitter, we are required to provide the first meeting called ‘Meet and Greet’ free of charge. That actually takes up a lot of our time to do that. We usually spend one hour talking to the potential customers. We do a presentation to explain what cat sitting is and how it works. Then answer any questions they might have. If the customers want to show us where all the cat stuff are, we will do a house tour. All of these are free and though it’s rare, sometimes it might not bring in an actual booking. So it’s time lost and we are not paid. But it’s part of being a professional pet carer, we have to provide this service for ethical reason so we are happy to do that. But at the same time, as a business owner, I do have to be careful to screen potential time wasters so to maximise our time to provide service our actual paid customers. For example, if someone ring me on the phone and ask about my service and immediately mention her neighbour’s teenage son can sit her cat for 5 Euro, I know immediately that my service is not for her. Not purely because of the difference in budget, but my experience tells me this person probably won’t see the value of hiring a highly trained professional.
My phone is on 24/7. I try to reply customers as quickly as possible. Texts are generally replied with a few minutes. Email within a few hours. I also replied Facebook comments, blog comments instantly. Phone calls are replied as they come in. If I am in the meeting and can’t pick up the phone, I call back the first moment I step out of the meeting. As a result, my customers trust me because I am very reliable. And yes, I reply my customers even during my holiday. The only time I haven’t replied is during the first month of my maternity leave. I am a nervous cat parent, I know how it feels when we want to get an instant reply about our cats, so I try to make myself available for any questions or concern immediately. My customers know if I don’t call back in a few hours, sometimes is wrong. e.g. I was giving birth to my son.
Having said that, I am slowly trying to delegate some of these to the wonderful help Sara. I am hoping I can get a better work life balance now that I have my son in the picture…
Marketing
Cat sitting business is a business at the end. We need to do a lot of marketing to promote the business. I have been running a photo competition called ‘Maow Of The Week’ with great success since 2013. I will probably continue to do so. It takes about one hour a week of work, but it’s a lot of fun.
Almost every fortnight, there are advertising agents from different papers, website, magazine, even local school and rugby club (!) to ask us to advertise. It takes a lot of time to screen them and turn them down. I have huge success with online advertising and word of mouth so I don’t tend to do actual paper ad anymore. I used to do that when I first started my business on 2009 but that was because the whole social media thing takes off. Paper ad is too expensive and reach too little people in comparison to online ad. Plus, I notice most of my customers come from a certain group of people. They are the kind of people who will share cute cat photos on Facebook, and they don’t read actual newspaper…
That brought us to the subject of – Social Media.
What I am going to say might offend some people. It might be a stereotype but cat people do spend a lot of time on the internet, hanging out with other cat people, sharing cat photos, laughing at cat jokes, etc. Heck, you are reading my blog! haha
So I do need to spend significant amount of time every day to interact with customers and other cat lovers who might potentially turn into my customers or refer their cat loving friends to my business. This is the part of my daily duty that I quite enjoy. I love cats and I love to chat with cat people, so yeah!
IT
I don’t like to deal with technology.
But unfortunately as a one-woman show, I need to deal with everything.
I have maintain my website (a revamp of my website is long due! I need to get it done before Christmas season!!! UGH!!!!)
I am also in the process of building a new CRM. With the growing number of customers every year, I need to have a better CRM. It’s a long term IT project, and I am pulling my hair out just talking about this now. So I stop.
Charity Work
People might be aware but it’s almost unavoidable to be involved with charities when one is in an animal business. Cat charities and Maow Care co-exist in a win-win situation. Cats helped by Maow Care will become potential customers. Charities helped by Maow Care will refer future adopters to use Maow Care. So everyone is happy.
At the end of the day, cat sitter are genuine cat lovers, it’s only natural that we want to help.
Often I got pet sitters who just started ask me how to get more customers, my standard answer is always this – you need to be patient and you need to do a lot of free work to build a reputation.
I started a cat food collection campaign recently. Click on the image to learn more!
Legal Matters
Making sure insurance is in order. Sorting out piles of paperwork coming in the mailbox every day. Just like any other business. I bore myself just talking about this, so let’s move on.
Human Resources
Every cat sitter is required to have a back up person. In case of accident or injury, a cat sitter should provide a back up plan to take care of cats under their care. And since 2012, I have Sara, Oli, Laura and Grainne work with me as contractor sitters. They are all my existing customers and have been great fun working with people who are as cat mad as I do. (Happy face!)
But as a result of expanding the team, it comes more paperwork and accounting to do! (Sad face…)
Blogging
After being a cat sitter for over 5 years, I realise writing about cats is the natural next step. I work with and talk about cats 90% of my waking hours. I have so much to say on the subject. Plus, seeing so many ignorant people and general horrible attitude toward cats in Ireland, I feel a calling to educate the general public. Hence, I started writing this blog.
As you can see it’s a constant struggling to put different hats on every day to run a cat sitting business!
Some people complains the price we charge is too expensive for ‘just putting food down’. But the thing is, we don’t just put food down! As you can see, there are so much more! We are only being paid for one item out of this list of 10 – the actual cat sitting visit. But the other stuff all needs to be done and absolutely necessary.
Being a cat sitter is A LOT more than just taking care of the actual cat. It’s a huge responsibility and require high level of problem solving skill and organisational skill. If you are not a multitasker, being a cat sitter is not for you.
During the past 5 years, I have seen so many pet sitting business and pet grooming business opening up, only to close down in a few months down the line. Most of the time, it has nothing to deal with not getting enough business. There are more than enough business in Ireland to have many more pet sitters, trust me! Usually it has a lot to deal with the person not suitable to be self employed. Either having wrong expectation (e.g. thinking ‘playing with animals, yeah!’ or thinking ‘I am going to make a lot of money JUST playing with animals! Yeah!’ ) or just don’t have what it takes to run a business (‘I can’t do customer service.’ WHAT?) A lot of people think ‘I love animals, so I play with them and take good care of them.’ Well, I am sorry to say, being good with animals is only one of the item on the job duty list. As you can see, there are so much more.
I am pleased to say it has been over 5 years I am a cat sitter and I am still here! I don’t make huge amount of money, but I really enjoy my job and can’t imagine doing something else!
Before I go, I will show you a picture of my office, so you can see where I pull my hair out doing my account and paperwork…haha.
Coming up – I will bring you to my round on a typical day (if there is such a thing) and an atypical cat sitting day. I will also show you my gear. So FOLLOW my blog if you don’t want to miss these fun posts.
