The pet owner gave 1 star and it has an effect already for sits I have applied their review is lengthy eventhough i have responded .Any suggestions.
The issue started with communication. Tume does not use WhatsApp, so I had no way of communicating with her other than the app or email. I tried to make that work as it was her preference. But then she was late to her arrival time and I was panicking because email is not a quick way to communicate. Eventually 30 minutes late she called my number. I wasn’t sure who it was, but I picked up and she was upset with us because she was lost. Even though I gave her detailed instructions in the message on how to find us and the Google link because our address doesn’t line up with Google so you need the coordinates, which I sent. But she didn’t use Google maps because that was packed in her iPad. But somehow that was my fault. OK no worries we can move passed that. Normally we don’t like to have a sitter come the night before, but we made an exception for Tume. We could have requested that she come on the day or find a hotel for the night but we allowed her to come early, because we are reasonable people. She didn’t really seam into the cats, which put up a red flag, but we thought really what’s the worst that can happen. Our girls free feed and only really need clean water and a clean litter box. It’s too late now to get someone else and so we just tried to go with it. Everything at that point seemed to be OK, until we returned. When returning to our apt we knew immediately something was wrong. The smell of cat urine was overwhelming and our cats did not come out to immediately great us, which is not normal. We threw our bags down and realized that one of their boxes was closed, the one by the window that I expressed to Tume not to close the lid, because our girls are too big to use it closed, they can’t even get in the flap. Then their other box, which is in a hidden cabinet was so full of caked on urine soaked litter that we had to scrape it off the bottom of the box. Voodoo’s eyes were caked in tears from the ammonia. Both girls had been holding it in and once the box by the window was open, they each rushed in there to use it. Luckily we have beautiful well-behaved girls that didn’t urinate outside their horrific box. But the state of the box was borderline neglect. I messaged Tume to ask her why she said she cleaned the box, when she obviously hadn’t, and why she closed the other box when I specified not to. She said it was our fault because we didn’t describe how to clean a litter box in our welcome guide and the other box was only closed that morning before she left. Which made no sense because it was clean and hadn’t been used, if she didn’t know how to clean one box, then both boxes would have been caked in urine, unless she lied and had the first box closed the whole week. I would not recommend Tume for pet sitting anyone with a cat. If you don’t know how to remove urine clumps from the most popular type of cat litter in the world, you probably shouldn’t be watching people’s cats. Furthermore if Tume had a question about it, Cher cleaned the boxes in front of her on the morning of our departure, so she could have asked at that time. And no amount of ventilation will fix the ammonia from 1-1/2" of urine left in a cat box, so it wasn’t our apartment that was the issue. We tried very hard to make Tume comfortable in our home, which she treated disrespectfully. Yes, the floor was sweeped and mostly the apartment was in ok shape, which would have been acceptable to us if the ONE thing that was important was taken care of. Our girls are THE most important thing and they were miserable. We are heartbroken that we left them for 10 days with this person. I am praying that neither get sick or have a urinary tract infection from this. I cried a lot last night over them, but now I’m just really mad.
My response
Holly sorry you felt disappointed with my care. I followed the instructions provided in your welcome guide,including daily scooping poop and pee clumps both litter boxes, fresh water, and food replenishment.The apartment did have a noticeable urine odor when I arrived, and I did my best to manage it during my stay;swept the apartment daily, cleaned up vomit incidents promptly, and emptied garbage daily to maintain a clean environment for both your pets and your home. I always aim to provide responsible and caring service, and I’m surprised by the suggestion that I don’t like cats — I love animals and take pride in caring for them. Regarding communication, I communicated daily by texting and email. I was not aware that one of the litter box lids should remain open, as this was not mentioned in the guide. I don’t recall a verbal instruction regarding this, but if I missed it, I sincerely apologize. At all times, I prioritized the cats’ well-being and maintained a clean environment. I regret if my presence felt disrespectful in any way — that was never my intention.I care deeply about the wellbeing of the pets I look after and regret that your cats seemed distressed upon your return. I appreciate the opportunity to learn from this experience and wish you and your cats the best.