Cattery or cat sitter: an honest comparison

What you are actually choosing between

Both are proper options run by people who know cats. The difference is who does the moving: with a cattery you take the cat to the care, with a sitter the care comes to the cat, and almost everything else follows from that. The row-by-row table is on the cattery alternative page, so I will not repeat it. This post is about what each one is like to live with.

What each one looks like from your side

Before you go

With a cattery, the work is front-loaded. Most want proof that vaccinations are in date, so check the dates with your vet well ahead, because catching up can take longer than you expect. Then it is the carrier, the car, and a drop-off inside their opening hours.

With a sitter, the work is a conversation. I come round, meet the cat, write the routine down and take a key. On the day you leave, you leave.

While you are away

The honest advantage of a cattery is that somebody is there all day. Your cat is in a pen with cats either side, and how it takes to that depends on the cat. Some settle in a day. Some never do.

With home visits the cat is alone between visits, which for a healthy adult cat is a normal working day. Own bed, own tray, own window, own garden if it usually goes out. I come once or twice a day and message you after each visit.

When you get back

From a cattery it is the carrier and the car again, a collection inside opening hours, and a few days of readjusting. Most bounce back. A few sulk for a week. From home visits, you walk in and the cat is where it always is, mildly put out that you went anywhere.

The cost, worked through

I will not quote cattery prices. They vary from one to the next and any figure here would be a guess, so ring two and ask. What I can show you is how the two are structured, because that decides which is cheaper for your household.

One cat, a fortnight away

A cattery charges per cat per night. Fourteen nights for one cat usually runs into three figures.

Home visits are charged per visit, and there are no nights. Once a day for a fortnight is fourteen visits, each from £12.50 for thirty minutes with me. Twice a day is twenty-eight. Multiply and you have your figure, confirmed at the free consultation. For one cat the gap can be smaller than people expect, so get both quotes.

Whoever you use, home cat sitting is typically between £10 and £20 a visit.

Three cats, a fortnight away

This is where the two pull apart. In a cattery the charge is per cat, so three cats is three lots of it. Some will let cats from the same home share a pen, but you are still paying for three, and still getting three carriers into the car.

At home, one visit covers up to two cats. The third adds £3 per visit. Three cats over fourteen visits is the one-cat figure plus fourteen lots of the extra-cat charge. The cost barely moves, because I am doing one job in one house whichever it is. In a cattery it climbs with every cat, which is why multi-cat households nearly always come out ahead at home.

Medication is straightforward on my side: an insulin injection visit has its own set price and anything else is a small surcharge. On the cattery side it is a question to ask. See medication visits.

When a cattery is the better choice

I would rather say this here than after you have booked me.

The clearest case is a cat that should not be alone for hours at a stretch: just out of surgery, a condition that can turn in an afternoon, or a very frail old cat where a bad turn needs someone within minutes. Your vet will tell you if that is your cat, and if it is, staff on site all day beats me twice a day.

The second is the house. Unheated in January, half-packed for a move, or full of builders with the doors propped open, and it is not somewhere a cat can safely sit between visits.

Some cats simply do not mind. If yours has been before and came home the same cat, that is useful evidence and I would not talk you out of it. There is more on the comparison page.

Where I come into it

I do the home-visit side of this. I have looked after cats in their own homes across Liverpool, Knowsley, Sefton and St Helens for over sixteen years, on my own, DBS checked and insured. What a visit involves and what it costs is on the cat sitting page. The consultation is free, and if I think a cattery would suit your cat better, I will tell you.

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