Hi, any ideas or comments on this, I have left this review but need advice on how to get this sit removed from the site…It was horrendous, part of me still wondering if I’m being over dramatic but my gut is telling me not. It’s helped to read the comments on my other post about my own sitter that I had during this peirod, perhaps it is just a case of there being a lot of people trying to save money and not necessarily people who love animals - sitters and sits alike. This is my experience…
It is contrary to the English character to leave a negative review but I feel so strongly about this sit that I cannot do anything other than leave a 100% honest review - my conscience would not allow me to let anyone have to experience what I did. Or, worse still, turn up at this sit with their children and have them experience it. This sit should not be on TrustedHousesitters. I am so so relieved I had arranged for my children to be dropped the following afternoon by some friends who live locally as I cannot imagine how they would have coped with this sit.
Communication was sporadic and not ideal in arranging the sit - first red flag. But F then appeared very friendly when the Teams call was finally arranged and it seemed like it was going to be a perfect fit for half term for my sons and myself. We all love animals and an outdoor life and were looking forward to feeding the goats and going on walks with the dogs. The house and garden looked lovely too. We also have friends in the local area and I believed I had done my due diligience by making requiste enquiries in terms of doing a sit on a farm with my young children. She had mentioned on the call that the cows would be calving and we had to look out for cows in distress, she also said on the call that she wasn’t sure but the goats might be pregnant too…second red flag.
Ten days before my own arrival plans changed due to having to attend a court hearing at short notice. This meant I would arrive a 4 hours later than initially planned. F had said this was actually better for her as she had a conference to attend in the morning. In the end I arrived one hour earlier and this did not seem to be an issue for F and she even offered to collect me from the station 5 minutes away. I was going to walk and arrive at the planned time. She insisted on picking me up.
However, it became clear when I walked into the house that F was not prepared for the sit at all - third red flag. There was no welcome pack provided, she had said it was alll printed out when I asked for it previously when no detailed instructions were provided on line prior to the sit - fourth red flag.
She showed me around upstairs to put my bag in a bedroom and that is when she showed me the “kittens”. She had mentioned on the call that they had a kitten - it was not on the sit details - fifth red flag. There was a story about how they wanted a farm cat so they had got a cat who then had kittens and that the mother cat had apparently climbed out of an upper floor bedroom window and escaped, so they then got another kitten (no mention of what happened to the other kittens)…and that they lived in her son’s bedroom - sixth red flag. She opened the door and the stench that came out made me wretch it was so bad. I had to pull my top up around my nose and mouth. She seemed not to notice it, and did not acknowledge it. There was a tall cage in the middle of the room with an overflowing uncovered litter tray, covered in dried cat excrement, it was all over the cage floor too. On the higher level of the cage there were two metal bowls with hard caked on cat food, rotten old food everywhere around it and on the cage wires, a dirty drinking bowl without water and a bowl full of biscuits. She ignored all of this and went over to show me the leopard gecko, she said her son did not look after it anymore and so she was lumbered with it and she didn’t know anything about looking after them. When I asked if it made a noise (geckos have a very distinct call) she looked completely confused and had no idea what I was talking about - seventh red flag. She also said they’d run out of live food for the gecko, she could go to AShford she said, but she was already late leaving (not mentioned previously) but the gecko needed the grasshoppers and meal worms… I did not have a car but offered to go to Ashford in the morning as she seemed so stressed at this stage - eighth red flag.
She then turned to the kittens care. She called them “cats” not kittens this time, which I thought was strange. They were quite small so I’d say 6 months old maybe, but not related, very different looking cats and clearly not related. One scared, one friendly. There were some boxes with food pouches lying in a pile, and a big bag of biscuits, and next to it a big sack of litter, and then a pedal bin next to it. There were clothes and books and others belongings strewn in amongst everything, she looked through the piles for litter waste bags and found some. She explained I had to scoop up the cat poo into the bags and then put it in the pedal bin, which she opened and I gagged at the smell it was so bad. It was half full of bags of poo. I’ve never ever seen anything like this before. I have three indoor cats of my own, and have had cats all my life, and have never ever seen anyone looking after cats like this before. It was so unhygienic and inhumane. Later on after she’d left I went in to see the kittens again and the tabby cat had yellow diarrhea with blood in it. When I told F she said this the next day “I saw no blood in her stool and her poos, although soft, were the same they have been for the last 2 months. The vet gave me an extra strong wormer in case it was an unusual worm that affected her yesterday evening” - there is no such thing as an “extra strong wormer” or an “unusual worm” occurance as a one off - these cats were living in a locked bedroom with no access to outside or even fresh air, the windows were painted shut. I have no idea why she would say this, but my gut feeling is the cat was not taken to a vet and likely had not had any vaccinations. It is incredulous that anyone was sleeping in this room too, let alone a teenage son of a GP. I have never seen anything like this, and I cannot fathom what is behind it. Afterwards F sent me a long message apologising but also gaslighting and sweeping over the whole thing saying “I had time today to fully clean the cats room, and I apologise wholeheartedly for not doing this before you came. I was attending a meeting with the parent of a child who died earlier yesterday, and it was hard to get to Canterbury and back, feed the children, and you arrived and hour earlier than expected so I hadn’t cleaned the cats room properly” - none of this is true, this was not a one-off not cleaning a litter tray for a day and I have no idea why she would claim these things. Anyway, I took photos and have provided these to the RSPCA.
The next red flag was the dog J. When F had disappeared off the children introduced me to J who was sprawled in the sitting room, she didn’t get up, her tail just wagged, which seemed strange. The children said she couldn’t really walk and needed to be picked up to go outside to the loo, this had not been mentioned by F at all. Turns out J is so arthiritic she can hardly stand, she needs help to get settled comfortably in her sleeping place in the draughty hall way and yelps if she is uncomfortable, she barks when she wants water as she can’t get to standing without assistance. After they had left and I took J outside in the dark to have a wee and a poo, she keeled over on the grass, she needed to be totally supported to even toilet. She is a retriever so not light to carry, although skin and bones and clearly unwell and in a lot of pain. Again, I don’t know if this is a religious decision or that she is a much loved pet and its too hard to have her put to sleep. I don’t know but it was really hard to see and witness. She was clearly a lovely loving dog who had a sweet nature but was now smelly, old, possibly blind (cataracts in both eyes) and unable to go to the loo herself, get to the water bowl and was confined to indoors. F did also say that I must shut the two sitting room doors as J poo’d on the floor and so to contain it in the hallway and the kitchen… Again, after I had left I was sent this from F "Thankfully, both N and J are absolutely fine. I have been given longer term treatment for J for her arthritis, but no immediate pain relief. J was bright and friendly and unusually mobile going to the vet today. She always does like to meet new people! " - another red flag, clearly J had never been to the vets before, or she did not take them to the vets, whichever it is, there is something very wrong with the set up here.
The two spaniels were lovely but not well trained and did not come to heel so F said they must never ever be let out without leads as they would likely never come back. A tricky situation with calving cows so close to the house. They were sweet dogs and enjoyed and clearly needed the long walk I took them on the following morning before I left. F said they are often left locked in the windowless room just off the kitchen for 8 hours at a time when she is at work.
The goats were straightforward to look after and attend to. Goats are goats and are happy if have fresh water and food.
The horses were lovely and it was straightforward to clear their manure as they were docile and paid no attention to us in their pasture. However, F is piling up the manure in a massive pile in the same field they are grazing, very close to where they are grazing and very close to a stream and water source.
Finally the cows. Having been told - in the call and for the ad for the house sit - we wouldn’t have to do anything with the cows except count them from behind the fence F went on to explain how we were to feed them… She took me to the field, explained how the electric fence turned on and off, and then climebed over and found two very large branches from under the oak tree, she took the larger one and gave me the smaller one… She then proceeded to walk towards the cows with the branch in front of her, telling me to follow her… I found this incredibly strange and made sure I was behind her and close to the fence. My local friends are dairy farmers and I know even from my own experience in the countryside, you never ever approach calving cows… I have no idea what she was attempting to do, no idea why she made me do this with her. It seemed incredibly irresponsible, and not the behaviour of anyone who knows anything about cows.
Finally, the house. The kitchen was filthy, there was an overflowing food waste bin with compost bags on the sink draining board spilling out with rotten food. The fridge was filthy and empty except for one plate of uncovered mashed potato and another uncovered ham. She said help yourself to anything which was kind, and sugggested looking in the pantry too… I looked when she’d gone and was so shocked to see the state of it, open cupboards with rotting food on the shelves, the tall freezer was dirty too, some shelves completely frozen shut, the rest full of half eaten open tubs of icecream mixed in with slices of frozen bread. It was horrendous. There was a cake tub with green and mouldy rotten cake in it on the top.
Unfortunately I had no idea that this was even possible for a house sit and I spent the whole evening trying to work out what to do. I only had one hours sleep in total in between J whimpering in pain and barking most of the nights and not knowing what the right thing to do was. I obviously did not want to leave F in the lurch but I also could not bring my sons in to the house with the situation with the cats and J.
After I had let F know I was leaving, and had done all the jobs and made sure all the animals were fed, watered, walked and safe, I left - 12 hours later she sent me a long message saying… “I have two jobs, four children, and 27 animals to care for… This makes me often forget key details, and it was an honest oversight on my part that I didn’t fully explain about J’s mobility, and the House sitters website has not been updated with the kittens yet because they arrived only 8 weeks ago”.
I don’t know what the true story is here but there is something very wrong with this set-up. It’s especially worrying that this woman is a GP as one would have thought that would have necessitated at least a hygienic home. This whole thing cost me an absolute fortune, and caused a huge amount of disappointment for my sons half term and most of all I would just hate anyone else to be subjected to this too. Unfortunately I had an £80 Asda shop delivered in the evening and had to leave the whole lot at the house - no acknowledgement of that by F. My ticket from Bath to Kent and back cost me £98. I then had to also find an alternative arrangement for me and the boys as we had our own cat sitter in and I did not want to let her down and cancel the sit for her. So, all in all this was an extremely disappointing, distressing and expensive sit and although I am sure F is probably a perfectly nice individual I think she is way out of her depth and the country dream - they’ve only recently moved here in the last year - is perhaps not going exactly in the direction it should be. Please don’t do a sit here. This sit should not be on the TrustedHousesitters site.
