You know, it's amazing.

I just forget how badly I need this, you know?

Just get away and stop thinking about everything, everything, everything.

Hmm, I wonder if the cats are okay.

♪♪

Yeah, I'm sure they're fine.

Ah.

♪♪

You know what's funny?

When I think about it, I always start things with, you guys have been asking me this question all the time, and let me give you the answer.

Not this time.

This is one of those things that nobody really thinks about until I reference it, whether I'm talking to my clients, it gets referenced all the time.

Anyway, I'm talking about what I think you should do when you're going away from your home, whether you're going on vacation or just visiting someone for a few days or whatever it is.

I have this thing in my head that I go, you know, I wouldn't do this, and you could get away with this.

This would be fine.

This is ideal.

And every time I say it, everyone has the same reaction.

They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I didn't think about that.

So I'm just, you know, getting ahead of the whole game here.

It is time for you to take a vacation.

So what leads me to put things in the absolutely no, the yeah, this is fine, and this is ideal buckets?

When you think about what it is that gives cats their mojo, their confidence, and what robs them of it if they don't have it.

So the first thing is the three R's, and that is routine, ritual, rhythm, a sense of an ironclad circadian rhythm that cats are just tied to.

They do not thrive on anarchy.

They thrive on the repetition.

The second thing that gives mojo is the perception of confident ownership of territory.

Without that, they also suffer from anti-mojo.

And the third thing is relationship.

It's not just the stuff that gives them their three R's.

It is relationship.

And I know sometimes it's in the back of our heads.

So there we have it, the three buckets.

Again, the three R's, territorial confidence, and relationship.

All right, so let's get to the how to leave your cats at home when you're going somewhere else buckets.

The first one is the no.

Let's just cut to the chase.

Not great, Bob.

If you think that going away for a few days, even 24, 48 hours, and you think that it's OK to leave a trough of food and a fountain for your cats and say, you know, they can do without the scooping for 24 hours, no.

No.

With cats, we just assume they will be fine.

Don't assume that.

And don't just leave them alone.

So the next one is also not great, even though you think it might be.

No, it's not.

And that is having your mom or your friend or your neighbor just stop in for 20 minutes a day.

I know.

He wanted to do a stop-and-shot.

I didn't want to do a stop-and-shot.

Scoop the boxes, put down some food, freshen up, say bye, kitties, and they're gone.

Again, it is such an interruption.

Oh!

Oh, no!

They're coming in through the back door!

In the territorial confidence part, in the three R's, in their relationship with you, you're not even giving them a remotely soft landing.

And I know it just feels easier, but it's bad easier.

Number three, taking them to a boarding facility or even taking them to somebody's house.

And for dogs, it might be just fine to take them to a facility, but you take a cat out of that home turf and the smells that tell them I'm home and all the signposts that say I'm confident and their base camps and the stuff that smells like you, and you put them in a space that is and has to be sterile.

It's still far from ideal, but it's also destructive for them.

So by the time they get back to the house, they may act out in an anxious way that you weren't even expecting, that kind of rebound effect, because they were robbed of territory for X amount of time.

Now, that all said, if it's an emergency, if you've got to get your cats out, you know, a gas leak, whatever it is, take your cats to a boarding facility.

There are plenty that try their hardest and really do their best to do a home-away-from-home type of thing.

So do it then.

It's just my take is it's still not home, so it's not ideal.

All right, so now on to what I think is really good, and then there's sort of the Emerald City that I'll get to in a minute.

But it all revolves around something that I feel is just really going to solve the problem, and that's a pet sitter.

There's some websites that you can go to.

I'll put them in the description, just a few of them, and that also insists that their members are licensed, bonded, insured.

These guys are serious, and if anything happens, it reflects terribly on their business.

So they really do take a lot of good care, but like any job, you interview them, you have them come over to your home, meet the animals.

I mean, the animals will let you know.

If the pet sitter comes over, and the animals are like, nope, and they run or they scratch or they do whatever, then maybe you should move on.

Another thing you can do is, in a more organic way, go to places that you trust, whether it is your vet's office, a groomer that you work with, or the smaller sort of pet stores, or solicit information from people like friends and family that you trust, and you will get a pet sitter that they've worked with, and they go, yeah, this person is the bomb.

They can be trusted with your house and with your animals, and like I said, interview them, have them come over.

Now once you have settled on that person, here's how it can go, both really good and ideal.

Really good is you would have them come over twice a day, morning and at the end of the day, just to get those real big components of your cat's rhythm down, because that morning energy, when the sun comes up, they're used to you guys getting up and that peak of energy, so you want to maintain that.

They're up, in comes somebody, feed, a little bit of play, get that energy going, and then by the time that person leaves, then they're just, you know, hunt, catch, kill, eat, ah, groom, sleep, right?

Then at the end of the day, that same peak that they're used to happening, around dinner time, you know, or a little later, the sun's going down, you see where I'm going with three Rs and the maintaining of sameness.

Most pet sitters will have structure for the way they charge based on how long they're there.

You can pretty much call the shots on that as long as you plan in advance, and that's really important, and make sure that your vacation budget includes a pet sitter.

That's how important I think it is.

Our vacations, if it's an actual vacation, you know, we're planning this ahead of time.

Most of us just don't have the money to burn and like, yeah, I'm going to go to Cabo for the weekend, I wish, but you're planning these things months in advance, and you're thinking to yourself, all right, we got to deal with this much for plane, this much for hotel, this much for food, this much for our pet sitter.

You're just adding that in.

It just should be a part of your planning.

Now listen, if you can't plan budget-wise for this, if it's just absolutely a no-go, then go for asking a friend or a family member to come predictably.

This is when you have to do it.

Feel okay about saying, this is a job,

I really take this seriously,

I really want you to do this, this, and this.

That's the important part of all this.

That's what puts this in the yes bucket, is the maintaining of the three Rs, the maintaining of relationship, the maintaining of territorial confidence by having this regular trusting presence.

That's what makes it a yes.

But then what makes it ideal is going from having somebody visit two times a day and then going overnight.

If a pet sitter does overnights, they basically do it in blocks of 12 hours.

You might think that would be ridiculously expensive, but usually it's not.

They basically build it into their price structure.

So 12 hours, let's say it's 7 to 7.

You got dinner, you got bedtime, you got breakfast.

Bang.

That is the insertion of those three Rs, territorial confidence and relationship, all in one nice 12-hour chunk.

Now hopefully I've sold you on the idea of being a little more structured around your absence, but now I want to get a little more detailed about what you can expect and what will make you feel better.

So the first thing is when it comes to what to expect from a pet sitter, and this is why I think it's just a one step over having a friend or family member stay, is the expectation that it's a job and they should know that it's not just a matter

I'm going to come over,

I'm going to put some food in a bowl, and I'm going to cut out.

It's about what the rituals are that your cats will need to feel exercised and relaxed and knowing that, okay, this is how my life goes.

You can really detail it out.

As a matter of fact,

I mean, in my home, we do this.

I mean, when we have somebody coming into our home and we're going away for a bit, this is what comes in.

Now, of course, you might not make it as publishable as my wife did, but look at what's in here, man.

I mean, from emergency phone numbers to this is who you call if this happens, if the lights go out, you call this person.

Everything is in here.

That makes it so you can leave with confidence.

In my home, we have little signs all over the place to say, hey, lock this patio door.

Hey, don't forget, you know, we have a door dasher.

Every time you open the door, don't let so-and-so get through.

You don't want to be sitting wherever you're sitting and going, man, I hope that cat does not run out the door.

Can you imagine how that feels?

You don't have to if you prep.

Now, here's another hint that I think would be great, especially if your pet sitter or friend or family member is a first-timer over at the house.

It's an exercise that I will refer to as the handoff.

And the handoff is, depending on how, you know, skittish your cats are, is to have the pet sitter come over for a meal and a hangout once, twice, three times, where at first, they're just witnesses to mealtime, so they see you do it.

Here's an example.

I've had people come over to the house before where they just take the can of food and they dump it on the plate.

Like, it looks like a hockey puck and they walk away.

My cats, they need to have it mushed up.

They need to have it with a couple of drops of water.

I demonstrate to that new person how it's done.

In the meantime, the cats are watching it happen and they start to trust the person by association.

Next time they come over, they do the feeding and they do a little bit of playing.

They get them to trust a little bit, even if they're just sitting on the couch with you.

I know, it sounds like overkill, but if your cat is that wallflower, especially, you want that.

One other thing that you want to make sure that your cats have, just because you don't want to leave it all to the pet sitter, obviously you want to have toys that you can put around the house.

The category of toy

I call self-activated, which are the ones that they will hit or it's battery-operated, it's intermittent, and so as the pet sitter is leaving, they would put that out.

Or puzzle toys are great.

You should already have some, and if you haven't watched the puzzle toy video, go ahead and do that right about there.

And cat TV, things like birdhouses outside the window so your cat will be directed to sit in the window.

Having your cat trees in the window.

Beds near the window.

Windows are your friend also while you're gone.

Don't leave it all up to the pet sitter.

And speaking of the pet sitter, if you really want to make their day, all that good stuff that you already have and that you'll have before you go on vacation, have that extra little stash.

We'll call it the Santa Claus stash so that the pet sitter is now totally Santa Claus because they're presenting things that your cat doesn't normally have.

And you can go over to the Jackson Galaxy store because believe me,

I've thought of all this stuff and we have all this stuff in our Santa Claus stash.

That's like extra cool treats.

If your cats don't already get Churu, the tube treats, save that for the pet sitter because that is really good.

Freeze-dried treats.

We've got toys, puzzle toys.

We've got fresh beds that they're going to love that you can put in the window.

And cat trees.

Don't worry, we got you covered.

Go on to JacksonGalaxy.com and stock up for your vacation.

Now after all this,

I just hear the folks that I've talked to in person over all the years.

I've got plenty of clients and even folks that are watching here who have put it in comments that their cats have peed in their suitcases before or after they've come home for vacation.

You don't want that.

What you do want is you want to come home and your cats are like, hey mom, hey dad, and they're off doing something else.

That means that life was good while you were gone.

That means you can relax knowing they're going to have a good time.

And isn't that what we want?

You know, Jackson,

I really want to take my cat on vacation.

Is that okay?

Yeah, you can take your cat with you.

I've got a video about traveling with your cat.

I've pretty much covered it all at this point.