Senior Cat Sitter Sheet: 6 Med Fields, 2 Checks

The handover sheet is the difference between a sitter who keeps a 15-year-old cat stable and one who phones you from an emergency clinic. One page, 6 medication fields, food in grams rather than scoops, 3 emergency numbers, and 2 camera checks a day cover almost everything that goes wrong in a week. Cats past 14 decompress in 24-48 hours, and the failures that matter are quiet ones: a missed dose, half the food eaten, a litter box nobody counted.

The 6 fields every medication needs

• Drug name and strength exactly as printed, plus what it is for.
• Time of day, and whether it must be 12 hours apart.
• With food, or 30 minutes before it.
• The amount your vet set, as a number of tablets or millilitres, never as a range.
• What to do about a missed dose: skip it or give it late, and how late is too late.
• The 1 side effect that means phone the vet rather than wait.

Six lines per drug, no more. A sheet listing 4 drugs takes 4-6 minutes to read and is read correctly; a paragraph gets skimmed and misread at 7 am. If a drug is compounded into a liquid, write the concentration and the exact syringe mark, because a mark read half asleep is not a place for interpretation.

Feeding: grams and kilocalories, not scoops

A 4.5 kg senior cat needs roughly 180-220 kcal a day, and a scoop tells you nothing about that. Weigh the food for 2 days on a kitchen scale and write the grams down: wet food runs 85-100 kcal per 85 g can, dry food 350-400 kcal per 100 g. Split the daily amount into 4 small meals, because stomach capacity and appetite both fall after 12. Water matters as much: 50 mL per kg a day means 200-250 mL for this cat, and a cat that stops drinking hides it well. Note the bowl level at every visit.

One day on one table

A 4-visit day plus 2 camera checks closes the gaps; 1 visit a day leaves 22-23 hours unwatched, which is how a blocked cat is found too late.

Time	Task	Amount	If it goes wrong
07:00	Morning meds and breakfast	1 dose, 45 g wet + 10 g dry	2 meals refused: call owner
10:00	Camera check 1	10 minutes	Not seen in 6 hours: visit
13:00	Litter box count	1-2 clumps, 1 stool	No urine in 12 hours: vet
17:00	Water change and bowl level	200 mL topped up	No drink in 24 hours: vet
19:00	Evening meds and dinner	1 dose, 40 g wet	Vomits twice: call owner
22:00	Camera check 2	10 minutes	Breathing over 40: vet now

Three phone numbers, one of them a person

Write 3: your mobile, the clinic that holds the records, and the 24-hour hospital with its address and a drive time. Add the name of 1 neighbour who has a key and has met the cat. Check the drive time yourself instead of guessing, because 25 minutes at 3 am with no traffic is a different number from 45 minutes at 6 pm. Put the clinic's own after-hours line on the sheet as well, since the main number often routes to a call centre that cannot open your cat's file.

Two camera checks a day, 6 things each time

Place 1 camera where the cat eats and 1 where it sleeps, and check at the same 2 times daily so the comparison means something. At each check, look at 6 things: did the food go down, has the cat appeared in the last 6 hours, is it in the usual spot or a new hiding place, is the posture curled or stretched out, does it walk with the usual stride, and is the breathing visible and slow. A camera cannot weigh a cat, but it shows a cat that has stopped coming to the bowl, which is the earliest reliable sign in a week away.

Vitals a sitter can take

Resting breathing rate is the 1 measurement worth teaching: count chest movements for 30 seconds while the cat sleeps and multiply by 2. Normal is 15-30 a minute, 40 or more is a same-day call, and 60 is an emergency. Gums should be pink rather than pale or grey, and capillary refill under 2 seconds is normal. A rectal temperature of 37.8-39.2 C is the usual range, but only if the sitter is willing, because a frightened cat fights a thermometer and a torn rectum is worse than a missing reading. The ranges are set out in cat vital signs.

What a week of cover costs

In-home visits run $25-45 for 30 minutes and $40-70 for 60, so 2 visits a day for 7 days is $350-630 before add-ons. Boarding is $35-60 a night, $245-420 a week, but a cat that has never boarded pays for it in 3-5 days of not eating afterwards. A vet tech doing home visits charges $35-60 a visit and is worth it for a cat on 4 or more drugs. Add $20-40 for a stay that includes subcutaneous fluids. Compare the line items in our cost tools before booking.

The first 24 hours: normal and not

Hiding for 12-24 hours is normal when a stranger is in the house; not eating for 24 hours is not. A cat that eats nothing for 48-72 hours starts mobilising fat and risks hepatic lipidosis, a multi-day hospital problem in an old cat. Expect 1-2 urinations and 1 stool a day, and treat 24 hours of nothing as a vet call rather than a patience problem. Some weight loss across a week is normal, 5% is a call home, and 10% means coming back early. The wider routine is in senior cat care.

Format: 1 page, 14 point, 3 copies

Set the sheet at 14 point or larger on 1 page, medication block at the top, emergency numbers in a box. Print 3: 1 on the fridge, 1 in the sitter's folder, 1 inside the food bin. Photograph it and send it in the first message so the sitter has it on a phone before arriving. Add a 2-line summary at the top with today's weight and what a good day looks like. Update it whenever a drug changes, and put the date in the corner so nobody works from last month's version.

Five steps tonight

1. Write the 6 medication fields for every drug, in the order it is given.
2. Weigh 1 day of food in grams and split it into 4 meals.
3. Call the 24-hour hospital and confirm the night drive time.
4. Fix 2 camera check times and write them on the sheet.
5. Hand over a printed copy, text a photo of it, then watch the sitter give 1 dose.

Frequently asked