Cats of HomeExchange 😻 Share your photos and testimonials!

[Zann.HomeExchange]

Many of you live with a cat, and you know that home exchanging is the ideal solution for going on vacation with peace of mind, safe in the knowledge that the people who will be staying at your home in your absence will take good care of your little companion.

My colleagu, Suzie, is planning to write about this aspect of home exchanging on our blog, and as part of this, she’d like to hear directly from HomeExchangers who own one (or more) cat(s), or who have already looked after their host’s cat as part of an exchange

Share your stories, anecdotes and photos!
If that sounds like you, I invite you to share with us in the comments your experience with your cat, or your host’s cat, during your home exchanges! Here’s some guiding questions

• How was the co-living situation (with you or your guests)?
• How does your cat deal with people coming to stay with you?
• Do you communicate with your guests or hosts during the exchange to give news of the cat?
• What about your children, if you have any, how do they react when you’re staying with a cat?
• Do you have an anecdote?

Or if you have any other anecdotes, we’d love to hear all about it
And a huge bonus for us would be if you could also share a photo of you with the cat, or of the cat alone!

Thanks in advance!

[Trenke]

We have a very old cat that has been taking care of ever since we became a member of HE and hosted people, except for the first exchange, where we hosted people who were allergic, brought our cat elsewehere and cleaned our home very throroughly. After one such experience, we decided to try to find guests who would like to care of our cat and we always succeeded.

Our cat is a people’s person. We have often gotten pictures of guests with our cat on their lap.

Just this last holiday we had a bad experience; absolutely not with guests, but with the cat going through something. We were going away for 3,5 weeks through HE and would have guests the whole time, who would look after our cat. On Saturday nearly two weeks ago, the first family would leave, a daughter of a friend would come and prepare our home for the next guests, and then the next guests would come the same day. However, we got a message just a couple of days earlier. Sadly enough, the person who would come on Saturday would not be able to come on that day beacuse of Covid and the family members that would join her wouldn’t come untill the Tuesday after. So we asked the daughter of our friend to give our cat her food and medicine on Saturday and found a neighbor, a young adult, who could give our cat food on Sunday evening and Monday morning. On Sunday evening, I was called by the neighbor. Our cat was outside and walked very badly. The daughter of our friend had asked if she could let our cat out. She could, but I forgot to mention that the cat had to be let in again. We are used to our cat not walking smoothly, she has rheumatism in her hind legs, and since she had not eaten or drunk that whole time, we thought that the not walking well part was just normal. We asked the neighbor to check in in the morning and keep us updated, if it got better. She did and our cat got worse, she could hardly walk. She had to go to a vet, but that neighbor was leaving on a holiday, all our friends were on holiday and our guests wouldn’t arrive till a day later. Luckily, I am in a WhatsApp group with neighbors and I posted a shout out there, that we were in Spain (we live in the Netherlands) and our cat had to go to the vet. Some very friendly neighbors that we normally don’t really are in contact with, responded and did this for us. It turns out that our cat probably had a stroke. Our neighbors took very good care of her, communicated well with our guests and they then took really good care of our cat. They all communicated this with us. Of course, I put something about this in the review of the guests.
Our cat is still very badly, we hope she will improve a bit more.

We often take care of cats of other HomeEchangers, too. I always telll them something about how it is going and if it’s a lap cat, I will send pictures of their cat on our lap. Once, a very shy cat got quite close to us and we even petted him once, which was great, according to its owners.

[Zann.HomeExchange]

Oh noooo I’m sorry to hear about your cat! It must have been such a stressful period for you but I’m glad that it all got sorted out and that you’re still able to enjoy the presence of your sweet cat

[Trenke]

It was. We actually were visiting extended family (the mother of my Spanish sister in law), which we have never done while on holiday. We got there later because of the contact with the home front about our cat and the first couple of hours, I cuold ony think and worry about our cat. And when we got home, she was still so badly that I thought we’d maybe better put her out of her misery. She has gotten better since, so we have still got her.

[Trenke]

We had to let the vet put our sweet cat to sleep this afternoon, she had another stroke and had severe brain damage. We are very sad, but happy our neighbors and guests took so good care of her that she still had some time with us and that we could let her go and all be with her at that moment.

[Zann.HomeExchange]

Oh I’m sorry to hear this, Trenke! Sending all my love

[MarthaEcker]

We have two cats and have also taken care of cats on exchanges - both a 8 week old baby and a 21 year old centenarian!

Our house manual is quite detailed as one of our cats needs to eat specialized food, but so far everything was ok. We have a lot of guests who specifically want to exchange with cats, especially families with kids.

And we quickly learned that we have to go over the max amount of food they can have, as our cats have become chubbier as some of of our guests who could not resist their begging

Donnie & Juno

Their HE portrait