Confessions of a Retired Pet SitterI don’t think I’ve mentioned any of this yet but until last year, I had basically 2.5 paid jobs. One, the main one, is at National Geographic. The second one at which I thanklessly toiled (a little dramatic? perhaps) for three years, was pet sitting. I worked for an agency that takes care of animals (mostly cats but also dogs, fish, exotic birds, your random, demanding hermit crab, etc.) in people’s homes while they’re out of town.
I started working for the agency that shall remain nameless due to legal concerns (the privacy of our clients but of course) while in graduate school. I had initially hired the agency to take care of my own two cats, Begbie and Andy.
I had found out about the agency just by looking for such a service online; through the Washington City Paper’s classifieds. I was impressed when one of the pet sitters, a woman I will mysteriously call “Sally,” came by our apartment one evening to get the lay of the land and meet the “monsters” before I headed off for a weekend away.
Upon entering the apartment, she knelt down to greet Begbie. Her voice was saccharine and her lips pursed. A person less obsessed with animals would have gagged but I ate it all up. That’s the kind of love my buddy needs when I’m not around to give him the best.
Over time, we moved up the street and adopted a second cat. All this time, the agency did their best. Reliable, a little expensive (but, hey, what animal lover isn’t going to go all out to take care of their best buds?), quintessentially professional.
When I came home from Spain after the ethnography, there was a note from the new pet sitter whom I’ll call “Jenny.” Leaving what we call a “farewell letter” on company letterhead is our agency’s signature. It’s a great way to connect with the clients, as they return home, and to fill them in on all that transpired while they were away.
Even bad behavior pretty much must be couched in platitudes, such as: “Teddy is full of energy” is code for “Teddy was running around the apartment, knocking things over like a banshee. I couldn’t control him.” Or, another example, “Dolly gave me little love bites when I petted her” translates to, if we’re being honest (which we aren’t), “Dolly, crazy b*tch, bit my hand while I tried to give her a little affection.” It’s always something.
But, on the occasion of my homecoming from Spain, our sitter, “Jenny,” left a note praising my boys (which in their case, but of course, is of the most sincere nature) and asking if I was in graduate school. As a pet sitter now myself, it’s amazing the things you can deduce about a person simply by inhabiting their space(s).
“Jenny” suggested I consider working for the agency part-time, complementing my schoolwork and responsibilities as a teaching assistant at the university. Her somewhat random comment struck a chord in me as I was pretty preoccupied about money after a month and a half in the heat of Spain. The next evening I called the owner of the agency and the rest is seemingly ancient history.
I wonder how many pet sitting jobs I’ve done since my first, which I didn’t do alone but with another pet sitter, just to be sure I knew what was what. Just this past Thanksgiving holiday, I had eight jobs a day, that’s 15 cats; holidays are especially busy for us.
Now it’s been three+ years and, boy, the stories I could tell.
My most persistent and annoying fear as a pet sitter, beyond an animal dying on my watch or escaping into the car-saturated unknown outside the door is that I’ll be going to a house or an apartment each day when I’m not supposed to or I’ll be walking in on someone doing something I don’t want to see, something I’m pretty sure they’re not eager to share either.
That’s why a pair of pj bottoms tossed thoughtlessly on the bedroom floor gets me guessing, my stomach churning. What if “Jane,” my client, has come home early? What if I have my days wrong and am not even supposed to be here?
Laugh as you must but my fears have been realized, several times. One early December Saturday morning I was pet sitting for a tall lesbian librarian who happened to live just down the hall from me in the very same apartment building by the zoo.
I had had a late night the evening (and subsequent early am) preceding and was a little hung over, I admit (but not impaired, mind you), as I headed off to take care of her two kitties. As we lived in the same apartment building on the very same floor, I headed out in my bed apparel. I call what I was wearing “bed apparel” as I don’t have proper pjs (my mom’s on it for an Xmas gift this year, no worries).
“Bed apparel” varies in its composition depending on how conscientious I’ve been about doing laundry. Might be a cotton summer skirt, very wrinkled and brightly colored, or wide-cuffed pants I wear to paint, stains and all.
This particular mid-morning, I’m not sure what I was wearing but it was sufficient and modest, certainly, although it was surely, also, mismatched.
I called out to them. They were both older kitties, fat, a little too full of dander, and on meds. No response.
“Hmm, that’s odd that they’re not here at the door nor in the living room,” I thought to my lonesome. “I hope they’re okay.”
“No note! Hmm …” This client had always been very thorough and helpful in the notes she’d leave me, a habit essential with cats on various meds at different doses for a slew of precarious medical conditions.
After scanning the kitchen and what a realtor will sugarcoat as the “breakfast nook,” I heard something stir in the bedroom, on the opposite side of the apartment.
I headed to the bedroom to noticed the door three quarters of the way shut. That was odd, too.
Normally the client left the bedroom door open so to remind me to feed the flightless African gray parrot incarcerated in his white wire cage close to her king-sized bed.
“Laura!?” I quacked.
“Meg?” she mustered.
“I -I-I- I thought I was supposed to start today,” I ventured, a pinch of statement sprinkling 99 percent question.
“Oh shit! I forgot to call and tell you guys my trip fell through,” she confessed.
“Oh, okay. That’s okay,” I murmured as I backtracked out of the too-intimate space of her bedroom.
“I’m gonna get going now,” I instructed.
I reeled down the hall, through the living room, past the chunky tabby, petting him lightly as I whizzed by. Out the door, down the hall, back to the surety of my own apartment.
As I stood frozen in the safety of my own space, my cats gazed up at me, confused. Suddenly aware of myself and my panicked reaction to what had just transpired, I noticed my ticker racing.
Wow, the librarian in the bed really got me going. I was startled. I snatched the phone and called the owner of the pet-sitting agency, my big boss. She chuckled and empathized as I told her my shocking tale.
“Happens all the time,” she concurred. “And each time it happens, it’s never any less startling. Do I have some stories for you! Wanna meet up for a beer and I’ll tell you some?”
The owner of the agency I worked for started the company some 20 years ago when the notion of paying an absolute stranger $23+ dollars a day to look in on your kitty was lunacy. I’ll call her Cheryl. Cheryl’s a character. She’s sweet and sassy. She’s probably just a bit past 50. I admire her independence and grit; starting and building her own company, doing something she loves, working with and caring for animals. Plus, she volunteers at the zoo, at the elephant house.
Taking her up on her offer, we met for drinks one evening, over in Roslyn, a DC suburb across the mighty Potomac River in northern Virginia. I biked, she drove, and we shared two pints each of light imported beer.
In her 20 years in the “biz,” so to speak, she’s seen a lot and, as owner of her own pet-sitting agency, her employees expand her experience of the bizarre, sometimes nearly catastrophic, and always unbelievably awkward.
After grabbing our stools at the bar, she began her litany: There was the dog named Phuket who escaped from the fenced-in yard. When the frazzled pet sitter scoured the neighborhood, calling his name, longing to find him and bring him safely home, she didn’t realize Phuket, a resort island in Thailand for which the dog was named, wasn’t pronounced “Fuck-it.”
So there our poor damsel was, meandering through the alleys and byways of this small suburban village, desperately crying out, “Fuck-it, come here, God damn it!” over and over again. I wonder why no one came to her aid in her search.
And a final pet tale to round out this section: I was taking care of Oliver and Annie, a nice feline pair. Oliver’s a dark brown and black tabby whose tabbiness glimmers in batches on his white fur. Annie’s a gray and white long-haired kitty, soft and oh-so shy.
Their owner is a busy. She’s probably about my age if not a bit younger. A young lawyer, single woman. I met her only once when she initially signed up with our agency. She seemed hurried and impatient but her cats were sweet.
Her work often took her overseas to argue cases, that’s what I deduce (again, it really is amazing what you can learn about a person by the things they own and the spaces they inhabit). In her note to me, she mentioned that Ollie wasn’t eating as much as normal and that’s why she’d switched to wet food, an attempt to get him eating.
Ollie’s a heavy guy, always eager for “Greenie’s,” cat treats. I hadn’t seen him since the new year; this latest visit was at the end of February. At first blush, he’d looked to me as though he’d lost weight.
After a few visits, I became more and more concerned about him and his lack of appetite. Whenever a human or an animal stops eating and loses weight, something’s not right: either psychologically as in the case of anorexics or physically, as most cancers cause their victims to lose their appetites and also significant amounts of weight.
I emailed Ollie’s owner about half way through my scheduled visits. I told her I was very worried about him and didn’t think he was eating at all. The situation quickly escalated into a medical emergency that ended with me taking him to the vet (with the help of my husband and his Corolla, Jorgito, of course) one Wednesday evening.
Ollie up being diagnosed with fatty liver disease, which can pretty quickly kill a cat. Apparently, he’d stopped eating and was severely dehydrated. His owner came home early because of his medical emergency and he returned home and began eating normally after being force fed with a tube down his nose at the vet. He’s even regained some weight.
It was a tough call, though, to determine how severe the situation was and, once we were at the vet, to decide what the next course of action should be as he’s not my cat and it’s not my credit card on file.
Of course, I approached the situation as though he were my cat and even roped my husband into driving me to Ollie’s condo to force him into his cat carrier and cruise up to the Friendship Hospital for Animals. It was scary but, returning home that night after getting a parking ticket and Ulises and I bickering a bit through our fatigue and stress, I felt a deep satisfaction in seeing my boys. They are healthy and satisfied. Well cared for. Begbie’s a bit of a pain, waking me up every night in the middle of the night, once, twice, thrice for first, second, and so-on breakfasts but I love him.
It’s amazing how easily we take our health and that of those we love, animal and human, for granted. It’s important to recognize those moments before that security is imperiled to best appreciate what we have.
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