A Note for All Pet Sitters ...
The most eccentric care instructions, indulged
When I left my golden retriever, Monty, with a pet sitter, I thought my four pages of single-spaced instructions were perfectly reasonable.
“He thinks his real name is ‘What do you have in your mouth?’ ” I wrote. “So please check frequently, or you will end up spending the night with Monty in the ER.”
There’s something about writing out pet-care instructions that shows just how much these animals rule our lives. During his long life, Monty racked up thousands in medical bills because of his passion for eating my underwear, which meant I had to be very explicit in the directions I gave his caretakers. This, it turns out, is surprisingly common.
“When I was a kid, my parents would drop me off at the babysitter, and their instructions were like, ‘Make sure she stays alive,’” says Fei Fei Friedman, a graphic designer and dog sitter in Manhattan. But dog owners today? “Their instructions are as complicated as a Tesla owner’s manual.”
In Reddit communities and on TikTok accounts, pet sitters often swap stories of over-the-top care instructions for animals, like dogs that need to hear Frank Sinatra to poop, or kittens that attack if their food isn’t microwaved.
“My boy will not get out of bed in the morning unless you say ‘Good morning, Mr. President,’ ” reads one post. “He needs his green monkey to sleep,” reads another. “Don’t be afraid if he keeps the tail down his throat for more than a minute. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Do not say ‘Jake Gyllenhaal’ or she will start freaking out,” reads a third.
Kii Cash, a pet sitter in Orlando, Florida, was once warned to keep the knives locked up, or the cat she was watching might pick one up in its mouth and try to stab her. “I laughed,” she says. “Guess what happened.” Cas...
When I left my golden retriever, Monty, with a pet sitter, I thought my four pages of single-spaced instructions were perfectly reasonable.
“He thinks his real name is ‘What do you have in your mouth?’ ” I wrote. “So please check frequently, or you will end up spending the night with Monty in the ER.”
There’s something about writing out pet-care instructions that shows just how much these animals rule our lives. During his long life, Monty racked up thousands in medical bills because of his passion for eating my underwear, which meant I had to be very explicit in the directions I gave his caretakers. This, it turns out, is surprisingly common.
“When I was a kid, my parents would drop me off at the babysitter, and their instructions were like, ‘Make sure she stays alive,’” says Fei Fei Friedman, a graphic designer and dog sitter in Manhattan. But dog owners today? “Their instructions are as complicated as a Tesla owner’s manual.”
In Reddit communities and on TikTok accounts, pet sitters often swap stories of over-the-top care instructions for animals, like dogs that need to hear Frank Sinatra to poop, or kittens that attack if their food isn’t microwaved.
“My boy will not get out of bed in the morning unless you say ‘Good morning, Mr. President,’ ” reads one post. “He needs his green monkey to sleep,” reads another. “Don’t be afraid if he keeps the tail down his throat for more than a minute. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Do not say ‘Jake Gyllenhaal’ or she will start freaking out,” reads a third.
Kii Cash, a pet sitter in Orlando, Florida, was once warned to keep the knives locked up, or the cat she was watching might pick one up in its mouth and try to stab her. “I laughed,” she says. “Guess what happened.” Cash assured me in an email that the cat had dropped the knife before there were any casualties.
While these stories may seem outrageous, there are perfectly logical reasons why owners explain, and overexplain, instructions for their pets’ care, says Nancy R. Gee, the director of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University. For one thing, she says, animals can’t entirely grasp the concept of time, which can make a simple trip to the store feel like abandonment.
“You can explain to a young child that you are leaving and coming back,” says Jane Greer, a family therapist in New Jersey who runs an Instagram account for her Coton de Tulear, Riley. “But with a dog? They don’t know.”
That may explain why guilt-ridden pet owners leave long lists of what Reddit pet sitters call ‘enrichments’ to distract from the owners’ absence, whether it’s a T-shirt that smells like the owner, or favourite music and TV shows that must be played on repeat.
“Brenda the Accountant has a screen addiction,” Rennie Weller, a jewellery designer in Los Angeles, says of her Maltipoo. She tells sitters her dog needs plenty of TV time and instructs them to go to YouTube, search ‘dog videos’ and give Brenda hours of squirrels.
According to a 2023 Pew Research Center study, 51 per cent of US pet owners say their pets are as much a part of the family as any human member. And, Gee says, when people are asked to name those they trust most, “pets will often be closer in their inner circle than family and friends.”
Many pet owners also feel a strong sense of emotional debt to their animals, adds Greer.
“Human relationships are very tough,” she says. “Your pet may be the one non-judgmental being in your life. They’ll love you even if you’re not a very good person.”
Maybe that’s the reason we indulge our pets’ eccentricities and fears, no matter how absurd.
Carol Mithers used to leave excruciatingly detailed instructions about her scrappy chow mix, Casey, including this warning: “If you see or hear the Goodyear Blimp, grab the leash tightly and get home as fast as you can.” Casey was terrified of blimps.
“Once I had to literally lie on top of him to keep him from running into a busy street,” says Mithers, who is the author of Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and the Story of America’s Forgotten People and Pets. Rational or not, elaborate pet instructions are clearly a projection of our love, Gee says.
We owe our pets and adore them, even when they are diabolical. That perhaps accounts for one ominous instruction left for a pet sitter who later shared it on TikTok: “Jasper cannot be trusted. Good luck.”
The New York Times (17 October, 2025) Copyright © 2025 by The New York Times Company.
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