Going away: who looks after the cat, and how to choose well

Past two nights, the question stops being about supplies and becomes a question about people. Here are the four ways to have a cat looked after, what each one actually costs her, how to judge a sitter in a single visit, and the one permission almost every owner forgets to leave.

Start from the honest number

A healthy adult cat can be left alone for 24 to 48 hours. Not because she gets lonely on the third day, but because past that point nobody is there to notice if something goes wrong — and the things that go wrong in a cat are quiet. We have written that argument out in full in leaving your cat alone for a weekend, and if you are away two nights or fewer, that article is the one you want.

Everything below is for the trips that are longer. From here, the planning is not about water and kibble. It is about who opens the door.

The one thing that decides most of it: cats attach to places

Dogs attach primarily to people and will happily follow you anywhere. Cats attach to territory. Their sense of safety is built out of a known layout, known smells and known escape routes, and moving them removes all three at once.

That single fact ranks the four options for you before you have compared a price. For most cats, in most situations, the best outcome is the one where the cat does not move. Everything else is a trade-off against that.

The four options, and what each costs her

1. Someone stays in your home

A friend, a family member, or a house-sitter who actually sleeps there. From the cat's point of view this is the best arrangement that exists: her territory is intact, and there is a human presence across the night rather than a fifteen-minute visit. It is also the hardest to organise and the one that asks the most of the person.

If you can arrange it, arrange it — and accept that the flat will smell faintly of someone else for a week afterwards. She will forgive that far faster than she forgives a cattery.

2. A sitter who visits

The realistic default, and a good one. The cat stays home; someone comes once or twice a day to feed, clean, check and spend a little time with her.

The variable that matters is frequency, not duration. One visit a day is the floor — it means at worst twenty-four hours pass before a problem is seen. Two visits a day halves that, and for a cat who is elderly, medicated, or has any history of urinary trouble, two is not a luxury.

A quiet warning about the cheapest version of this: “my neighbour will pop in” is often a fifteen-second door-opening, a top-up of the bowl, and no actual look at the cat. That is not a visit. It is a feeding.

3. A boarding cattery

Here the cat leaves home, so you are paying the territorial cost in full. For most cats that makes it the most stressful of the four, and it is worth being clear-eyed about that rather than reassured by photographs of clean pens.

But there are situations where it is genuinely the right choice, and they are not rare: a cat who needs daily medication or injections and no one available is competent to give them; a very long absence where daily visits become unrealistic; building work or anything that makes the home itself unsafe. A good cattery with staff on site beats a bad arrangement at home, every time.

If you go this way, visit it first, in person, without an appointment if they allow it. Ask how many cats share air space, whether each cat has a separate unit, and what happens at night. Expect them to ask you for proof of up-to-date vaccination — a cattery that does not ask is a cattery that accepts cats who have not been asked either.

4. Take her with you

For nearly every cat, this is the worst option, for exactly the reason above: you are removing the territory and then asking her to be relaxed about it. A car journey, an unfamiliar house, unfamiliar smells and no escape route is a large amount of stress to impose so that you do not have to miss her.

The exceptions are real but narrow: cats habituated to travel from kittenhood, cats who have made the same journey to the same second home for years, and moves rather than holidays. If you are in one of those cases, the practical requirements for travelling inside the European Union are identification by microchip, a European pet passport issued by a vet, and a valid rabies vaccination — which has to be given a minimum waiting period before departure, so this is not a decision you can make the week before. Check the current requirements for your destination with your vet: they change, and they differ outside the EU.

How to judge a sitter in one visit

Meet them at your home, with the cat there, before you book. Then watch two things.

What they do with their body. Someone who knows cats sits down, does not reach out, and lets the cat make the first approach. Someone who marches over and picks her up has told you everything you need to know in four seconds.

What they ask you. This is the real test. A competent sitter interrogates you: where does she hide, what does she eat and how much in grams, is she on any medication, has she ever had urinary problems, what does she do when she is unwell, who is your vet. If they ask nothing and simply say “don't worry, I love cats”, keep looking. Enthusiasm is not competence.

Two administrative points worth knowing in France. Paid pet-sitting is a regulated activity: a professional caring for pets for money is required to hold the ACACED, a certificate of knowledge issued after training. Ask to see it. Ask also for proof of professional liability insurance. Neither applies to a friend doing you a favour, but for anyone charging you, both should exist and a serious sitter will produce them without being offended.

The brief you leave behind

Write it down. Do not say it at the door with your suitcase in your hand.

Your vet's name, address and telephone number, plus the nearest out-of-hours emergency clinic — look this up before you leave, not during. Your cat's microchip number and her insurance details if she has any. Food quantities in grams and at what times, not “a bowl”. Any medication, with doses and a demonstration. Where she hides, so that an empty-looking flat does not trigger a panic. What normal looks like for this particular cat, because a sitter has no baseline: a cat who always hides for the first two visits is not the same as a cat who has stopped coming out.

And the one almost everybody forgets: written permission to seek veterinary care, with a spending limit and a way to reach you. A sitter who finds your cat straining in the litter box at nine on a Sunday evening should not be hesitating over whether they are allowed, or how it will be paid for. Tell them in advance: go, here is the ceiling, call me from the waiting room.

Preparing the flat

Short, because the detail is in the weekend checklist and it does not change: two water sources in two rooms, an extra litter box, nothing she can shut herself into, no lilies, a window she can watch, and a key with someone other than the sitter.

One addition specific to longer trips: leave an unwashed piece of your clothing somewhere she sleeps. Your scent is part of how her territory reads as safe, and it fades over a week.

What equipment actually changes here

It changes the content of the visit, not the need for one.

With water, meals and the litter box handled automatically, the sitter is no longer arriving to do chores. They are arriving to look at your cat — which is the only part of the visit that a machine cannot do, and the part that gets rushed when there are three bowls to wash first. A camera adds to that: it lets you see between visits, and it lets a sitter answer “she's fine” with something better than a guess.

What none of it does is reduce the visits to zero. We build objects for the days you are out, and we will still tell you to book someone if you are away longer than two nights. If you want the equipment side settled in one order, our packs are grouped by how long you are gone rather than by product category.

Book the person first. The equipment makes their visit better; it does not replace it.

General guidance, not veterinary or legal advice. Vaccination requirements, travel rules and the obligations of professional pet-sitters change — check the current position with your vet and with the relevant authority before you travel.