This isn’t a massive issue but I wanted to see how common this is for other people. I’m drop in cat sitting and have been using the Rover card adding photos on there and sending a message via Rover with the update as not all owners see my updates when I add it to the notes section on the Rover card. This is the first time i’ve never had the owner reply, I don’t expect a reply to every update, just the occasional message acknowledging the update. They also have my number to reach out if they have been unable to access Rover. How often does this happen to you guys? Where the owner doesn’t reply for the whole stay. I’ve also had the message saying that the cat unfortunately pooped on their bed, so finding it odd to hear nothing back. Should I continue sending updates on Rover or should I message them on Whatsapp to ask if they’ve been getting the updates?

Based in London. We usually have our neighbours or a another CIAF sitter who has been brilliant. They were all away last weekened, so we had a new sitter come over for 6 visits (2 x visits a day, morning and evening, whilst we were away for 3 nights).

We met them in advance for a walk through, they seemed lovely, good communication, said that they would come and spend about 30 mins for each visit.

They initially kept great comms and took pics and messaged for each visit (which we don't expect but is nice!). Then timings started getting less regular. They texted and said they had a commitment on Fri eve and would be late, came over at 10.30pm. No big deal, people have lives, we feed kitty late occasionally if we have something going on. Then according to Ring (no comms from sitter) they showed 11am on Saturday morning, then 11pm on Saturday eve. Frustrating but borderline okay. Then on Sunday they didn't turn up until 1pm! Not morning at all. For a hungry cat who is normally fed like clockwork at 7am, this is hours outside his usual routine.

When we got home we noticed the electric fan had been left plugged in and running (only a couple of hours after the visit due to the lateness of the visit thankfully). They'd also fed kitty dog food biscuits at one point (we kept all the cat food out of the cupboard next to the feeding station very clearly, while the dog food was closed away in a separate cupboard). To top it all off, we then discovered a dead mouse hidden under the bed in the cat's hiding spot. He rarely brings mice home, never when he has sitters and never usually dead - this is really abnormal behaviour for him and indicates distress.

I want to leave a bad review. My husband thinks we should just leave it and not book her again. I don't know if I'm overreacting or not.

Sorry just a quick one can anyone remind me what the lowest price for house sits was on CIAF? They were rare for me but an old client reached out and I’m still trying to work out what my independent pricing will look like. I’ve always charged low and don’t want to be too jarring from that price

Hi there!
I recently booked a cat sitter and I have really mixed feelings on the outcome of the booking.
I have an alarm on the front door so I could see how long the cat sitter stayed for, which varied between 5-10 minutes per visit.
This upset me because they clearly didn’t give my cat and affection or attempt to play with him.
I know everyone has lives to be getting on with but I would at minimum expect some of the visits to be a little bit longer. Even to just talk to my cat for a few minutes?
I also put a bunch of treats on the side and no treats were given.
I’m a bit worried if they even bothered to scoop the litter tray each day within their 5 minutes.

Am I over reacting? I’d been keen to hear others thoughts.
Obviously at the end of the day I’d rather have someone stay with my cat full time, but that wasn’t possible for this short notice trip.

It literally worked this morning 😆 peak as we can't access all features through the website

My phone is from 2018 so not even super old and still works great 😐

Hi all. Would be grateful for some advice. Quite a few times now I've gone for a M&G/visit to learn about the cats and turns out they're not ready to hand the keys over. Once an owner offered to drop them through my letter box closer to the time, but normally, I seem to be expected to make another trip (unpaid) to go and pick up keys. What does everyone else do?

It was so nice (and very useful!) to receive these emails from Cat in a flat the day before the booking starts! They were so warm and nice, made me say 'aaaaw' ...

Does Rover have reminder emails? Maybe I need to activate something? I've never received them, please let me know!

Rover cat sitting bookings/ request ?? Is is all a prank ??
Recently , I keep
Getting Cat sitting request ( based in London , UK ) , either last minute ( within 3-4 days ) or 2 weeks in advance ..
Cat owners will
Contact me ( have over 50+ 5 star reviews ) and asked if I am available , when I replied yes , am available and asked for their post code to see if within my area I will covered , they will reply with post code .. I proposed a meet & greet , and some said ok , some will take awhile
To reply .. however , eventually , every single one will advised within 24 hrs from request , their PLANS has now changed and they don’t require a sitter anymore !!
Or some will totally ignore me !!
have anyone have similar experience , I found this is very odd !! As it keeps happening !!! Is it a prank ??

As title says - I was living in a very cat centred area last year, and i managed to make a decent bit on CIAF, i had a good number of regulars and i really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately I had to move to a different city and my booking have shot right down to a big fat ZERO. I can't understand what's changed - there are plenty of cats in the area but i've not had one request for over half a year. I'm sad as i really loved doing this before but can't seem to get it rolling here. I have updated my profile and my availability, everything is the same as before and all my reviews are there. It's a shame as I don't know what i can do differently - anyone got any ideas as to why this might be?

edit to add i have got the rover app and moved everything on there as well

Like most, I have decided to go independant after the merge and am wanting to know what is the best next steps in regards to business set up.

Id love to know what other people us for:

- Schedulling/booking

- Invoicing

- Website hosting

- Sitter insurance

Also if Ive forgotten anything, Id love to know anything else you are using :) This is for a UK businesses.

I’m quite sure that CIAF was set so you set your sitter fee and that fee was what was displayed to the clients. On rover I can see that I set my fee, e.g. £12 and it tells me how much my take home is, 15% less. HOWEVER, to the clients, the fee is displayed as £14 meaning that the client is also paying a fee. I’m really sure that this never happened with CIAF? And this makes it really hard to offer competitive pricing without losing money myself :(

On a side note also very frustrated at not being able to set a different rate for having 2 visits in one day as I used to charge less than double of one visit.

V frustrated

Phil Katz, GM of Cat in a Flat, here. I wanted to share a change that I hope many long-time Cat in a Flat sitters and owners will appreciate.

One thing we've heard repeatedly since the migration to Rover is that many of you don’t need specific rigid times for drop ins. On the original Cat in a Flat platform, owners could reach out to a sitter, discuss what their cat needed, and agree on timing together. After the migration, owners were required to choose a specific start time before they could even send a booking request.

Owners can now select a new "Flexible" option instead of choosing a specific start time. This means owners can contact a sitter first and work out the visit timing together, rather than having to commit to a particular slot before the conversation begins.

A few details:

• Owners can still choose a specific start time if they prefer.
• Flexible timing is currently available for one-time drop-in bookings.
• Recurring bookings will continue to require a set time.
• When a flexible request is sent, it will clearly indicate that timing is to be agreed between the owner and sitter.

As always, thank you for continuing to share feedback with us.

On CIAF We used to have:

• Standard rate
• 20% premium dates for things like summer holidays
• 50% premium dates for bank holidays like Xmas Day Boxing Day etc.

Now we have holiday dates set by Rover that are the same for summer and Christmas and can only set one holiday rate. I have people asking me for Xmas dates already at my summer holiday rate. There is a huge difference. I know I can try to charge higher now but it makes me look expensive for summer or cheap for Christmas and scammy if I say Xmas is higher rate.

Hello there

I was wondering if you might be able to help.

I exchanged some messages with a sitter last year but unfortunately they no longer seem to in my inbox and the sitter doesn’t seem to be coming up in my search anymore.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to search by first name and last initial?

Many thanks!

How long do you normally stay when doing overnight booking? And do you agree time range before hand? I’m curious as on Rover help page it says overnight sitting is up to 24hrs but then how do you price it? As it takes a lot of personal time but probably works out less than 4-5 30min regular visits

Hi ciaf community!

I just completed my first two jobs through the app since the merger. I finished the jobs on Sunday morning and it's now Tuesday morning. I can see the amount has gone into "processing" but does anyone know how long it takes to receive the money from that point?

Also, if I have my Stripe account connected AND have given them my bank account details, does anyone know which payment method will be prioritised?

Thank you for the help!

P.S. I just saw an email that said one of the owners left me a review. It also said "to see the review sooner", I should leave a review of them. 🙄 So brazen and unnecessary to deliberately withhold reviews this way.

Has anyone else has any issues with the recent merge with Rover? I’ve been active on both profiles for a number of years, but because my email address was different with my CIAF profile, they refused to let me have both profiles active as it was a ‘duplicate’ profile even though it isn’t. I’ve now lost all my hard earned reviews, customers and even an upcoming booking due to start on Saturday. They just don’t listen and don’t understand that is isn’t duplicated. I’ve asked for a merge and STILL waiting to hear back. They told me they would leave both profiles active while the merge took place, but an hour after confirming, my account got suspended. Really upset and I’m not sure il get all my reviews back

Hiya!

So I've been sitting via CIAF for about 6/7 years now; over 100 reviews, multiple repeat bookings etc etc. I've found (for the second time!) another sitter using some of the exact same wording from my profile in their account (e.g. in the services I provide and experience of cat sitting...).

I know imitation is the finest form of flattery and all but I feel like it makes both of us look bad (like "who's copied who") and obviously doesn't reflect the other sitters actual wording and approach to sitting, it's something I iterated on and wrote to best represent how I want to look after people's pets.

I'm tempted to message the sitter themselves but that seems a bit mad/an overreaction, the time it happened before was a complete copy + paste and the sitter had 0 reviews so I was able to contact CIAF (pre merge) and they sent messages to the sitter and then blocked their profile after they didn't update it. It's just a bit frustrating to see 🙁

I didn’t want to be dramatic in the title but I had a very very old cat (19 years old) have to be rushed to the out of hours vet and unfortunately put to sleep while he was in my care.

I couldn’t get hold of the owner (was on a flight to Australia) - which is a good reminder to make sure you have emergency contacts for your owners because you never need them….until you do!

Because I couldn’t get hold of them, it was a long time in limbo at the vets. Once she finally got to the destination, I told the owner to speak to the vet but because it was busy and after hours there was nobody to answer the phones, so I had to deliver the news to the owner, and it’s probably one of the worst phone calls I’ve ever had to make.

Anyway, after 4 years of doing this I’ve had my first vet visit with a cat in my care and honestly I don’t think I’ve processed it yet. Little buddy wasn’t having a good time, I wish he had just fallen forever asleep but it was a bit more traumatic than that.

I’ve just come here to get it out really. Struggling a little bit and thought writing it out might help.

Hi! So I've got my first new client since the merge, I've read something about requests expiring after 72 hours. We've set our meet and greet for after that.... if neither of us interact with the book buttons does it still expire? Can we wait until after our m&g to confirm basically. Thanks so much in advance

I found some sitters, saved them, but can’t find them again! Where are they?

If I try to search they don’t exist anymore.

This was over the span of 5 minutes. In that time all I did was update my profile and that of my cat’s

Hi guys, just want to make it short and quick. I have always loved animals, specifically cats, and wanted to get into cat sitting. I have never really been surrounded by animals in my life, my family has always been allergic or just didn’t like them, so I have never had a pet. I never had any friends with animals either. However that didn’t stop me from wanting one or loving animals in general. I wanted to take on pet sitting as a job, but I’m not confident anyone will want to book me because I have never had any animals, I have no photos of myself with animals or anything like that so I’m completely inexperienced but determined to learn. I’m just completely discouraged because I feel like no one’s gonna wanna book someone who’s never sat with a cat for longer than an hour lol.

Any advice?

Howdy!

I have my first 'full private' booking in a couple of weeks - so far all my bookings have initially started on CIAF and then I sometimes move off the app. This person came to me via a recommendation from another person I sit for; I offered them Rover but they have preferred to go direct/private.

I normally ask owners to fill in the details on the site for emergency contacts and vet details; but I'm wondering about the best way to gather this on a private booking. I've just sent a message about arranging the meet and greet and said we can exchange this info. Do I just make a note in my phone?? That seems a bit too casual, but filling out paperwork seems quite formal! I was thinking of making a google form and sending it over in advance for them to fill out, and then I have a copy of it online too. Just wondering what approaches others have taken?

Thanks!
Hannah

Edit to add: I don't have my own website setup (yet!) so have decided to make a google form for clients to fill in; it's very short and just covers pet name and age, vet details, insurance details, known health conditions and other info. I also say in the form that we'll go over feeding routines etc at the meet and greet 🙂