The eas­i­est way to get a quote is just to talk to me about your pet(s) and their needs, where you live, and I will just quote a price, but if you want to get an esti­mate of what the cost will be, add the basic ser­vice you want to any addi­tions or dis­counts that may apply (below).

The rea­son my rates are so cheap com­pared to most oth­er pet sit­ters (and cer­tain­ly any ken­nel) is that for most jobs, I’m just THERE while I do the writ­ing I would be doing any­way. I feed and care for pets, pro­vide extra scritch­es, loose super­vi­sion, maybe a lap around the block dur­ing the day for dogs, and a snug­gle at night. I might be gone for a few hours to my oth­er job or pop away for a social event in the evening, and I kind of just con­tin­ue my life unin­ter­rupt­ed from a dif­fer­ent house.

Basic ser­vices

My main ser­vice is overnight pet and house sit­ting along the 680 cor­ri­dor between Wal­nut Creek and San Jose. (I’m a writer, which I do any­where there’s wifi and a three-pronged out­let.) I can be flex­i­ble and will adapt the pric­ing to the job and your needs.

I’m sor­ry that I no longer dou­ble-book. It took all my time to go back and forth between two places, and it was­n’t worth it. I will have to give first come/first served pri­or­i­ty and take one job at a time. Please book in advance.

Where will I go?

I have to be in Con­cord most week­days for at least a few hours, and I cur­rent­ly dri­ve to San­ta Cruz at least twice a week, so there’s a pret­ty big area I will take jobs in as long as they don’t get too far from Con­cord and aren’t fur­ther away from San­ta Cruz than I am already.

Hous­esit­ting/Pet-sit­ting

I stay at your place pret­ty much most of the time includ­ing overnight. I take care of pets. I keep the house from look­ing emp­ty. How­ev­er, please note that, unless spec­i­fied and agreed upon oth­er­wise accord­ing to your needs and expec­ta­tions, I may be gone up to eight hours in a typ­i­cal day. If your ani­mals need more super­vi­sion than that, please let me know.

Base rate: $60/day ($75/day for long dis­tance)
Base rate for SF/City: $80/day

Note— While I per­son­al­ly have no prob­lem with any­one’s life or life choic­es, my abil­i­ty to sleep is lim­it­ed where there might be strong odors (par­tic­u­lar­ly 420, heavy mold, musty or mildew smells, strong incense, deep pet oil bed­ding smell in the bed I’m to use, or notice­able third­hand smoke). Apolo­gies in advance. It’s not you. It’s the cil­ia in my lungs.

24-hour super­vi­sion

For very short peri­ods of time, I can cov­er sit­u­a­tions that basi­cal­ly require con­stant super­vi­sion. [An injured or an ill pet for exam­ple.] This means I won’t real­ly leave the house for any rea­son, and I will keep an eye on them all the time, pos­si­bly even if I need to get up mul­ti­ple times dur­ing the night to take care of some­thing.

Note— I might have pre­vi­ous oblig­a­tions that I would have to can­cel to be present 100% of the time, so this can get expen­sive.

Base rate: $200/day

Additions—Please con­sid­er all that might apply

Fed­er­al hol­i­days +25/day

This does not include three-day-week­end days. (MLK, Pres­i­dents’ Day, Memo­r­i­al Day.)

High energy/high atten­tion pets: +$10–$20/day

Rather than sim­ply have a high­er rate, I pre­fer to keep my base rate low and charge extra if a job requires more of my time and atten­tion.

Please con­sid­er if your pet is (or the aggre­gate of mul­ti­ple pets are) just sort of high on the attention/supervision needs. Do they need to be watched, or they’ll start to chew up/get into/pee on every­thing? Are they going to have a hard time if I’m gone a few hours a day? Do they need to be crat­ed if some­one isn’t there and thus would be cooped up for hours if I went to my oth­er job? Do they need food or med­i­cine at a cou­ple of very spe­cif­ic times that are real­ly hard to work around?

Mild extra care: +10/day
A dog that needs to be walked twice a day or for a half hour walk. A cat with a com­pli­cat­ed med­ica­tion rou­tine (not just a pill twice a day), two or more lit­ter box­es that need scoop­ing every sin­gle day. This is about 20–30 min­utes worth of extra rou­tine.

Heavy extra care: +$20/day
Mul­ti­ple ani­mals need­ing mild care, dog need­ing a long walk [30min+] or more than one walk to get enough exer­cise to set­tle down, more than three cage-free pets, etc… This is about 35–1hr of extra rou­tine.

Bridge toll sur­charge: +$10

(For loca­tions across bridges from the East Bay) Unfor­tu­nate­ly, if you book me at a cross-bridge loca­tion across a time I need to go back and forth from Con­cord, I will have to add this sur­charge each time I have to pay it.

No wifi: +$10/day
Wifi is crit­i­cal to my writ­ing work, and involved in 85% of what I do when I’m not active­ly doing some­thing with your pet (even the video games I use to blow off steam), so if you don’t have wifi, I’m going to end up at a local cafe every time I want to post a blog. Note that I absolute­ly can­not under­take 24-hour super­vi­sion at a loca­tion with no wifi unless you are hav­ing a stone-cold life-event emer­gency and don’t know who else to call.

Unten­able park­ing: +$15/day
In all like­li­hood, my car will need to come with me to the job. If you hap­pen to live a five-minute walk from BART in a neigh­bor­hood with no park­ing, we can work some­thing out, but oth­er­wise, I’ll need a place to put my car, espe­cial­ly since I need to bring packed bags to your place. Usu­al­ly, this is not an issue, but some of you live in dense urban areas. If the area around the job rarely has park­ing or has a two-hour lim­it or some­thing requir­ing me to park blocks away or move my car six times a day, there is a sur­charge for that. If the park­ing sit­u­a­tion is even worse (metered or essen­tial­ly NO near­by park­ing for blocks), it’ll be a not-so-small sur­charge.

Last-minute book­ing: +$25
Jobs booked with less than 24 hours until they begin. I will do my best to make an excep­tion for bereave­ment trav­el.

Note: This addi­tion is not “per day.” It’s just a one-time sur­charge for the ini­tial incon­ve­nience. Please be aware that my avail­abil­i­ty is not guar­an­teed.

Pool care/Plant care/Caged or tank pet care:
Please con­sid­er how quick­ly a few rou­tine things done every day or every oth­er day begin to add up.

Easy peri­od­ic main­te­nance (aver­age <15 min/day): +$5/day
Involved or dai­ly main­te­nance (aver­age 15–30 min/day): +$10/day
Heavy main­te­nance: $30/hr

Oops!
Some­times we work out a quote in good faith, and then it’s not quite accu­rate. Maybe your chill pet becomes a high-ener­gy/at­ten­tion pet when they’re stressed that you’re not there. Maybe they only lis­ten to you and start to chew every­thing or pee in the cor­ners when you’re gone. Maybe the time and atten­tion you give them is just back­ground noise, and you did­n’t real­ly notice how much it could be. Or maybe the Inter­net goes out, and you can’t do any­thing about that while you’re on vaca­tion. Or per­haps some ill­ness or injury hap­pens that caus­es your pet to need far more care than either of us antic­i­pat­ed (and I obvi­ous­ly would nev­er just leave them hang­ing). Many times these sit­u­a­tions are no one’s “fault,” but they do come up from time to time.

If a dis­crep­an­cy from quote to real­i­ty comes up, I will assume good faith when we nego­ti­at­ed a quote, men­tion it in my final email, and let you han­dle it, based on your bud­get and best judge­ment. (I know, for exam­ple, that a $20 per day sur­charge on a 10-day job is not some­thing every­one can just afford.) If I think it will be a fac­tor that could come up in future jobs though, it might affect future quotes.

Dis­counts

Dis­counts do stack and add up. (At a job that was more like a get­away than a job, I’ve worked for as lit­tle as $10/day.)

Repeat customer/no key meet­ing: −$10
If you’ve already booked with me and I know the ins and outs of your place and your pets, and if we can fig­ure out a way (or a time) to get me the key that does­n’t involve a sep­a­rate trip, I will take off ten dol­lars from the final amount of an overnight job of 2+ days.

REALLY late first day and/or REALLY ear­ly last day: pos­si­ble half-day dis­count
Most of my rates are per day, even if some days start a lit­tle lat­er or end a bit ear­li­er. (I spend the first and last day prep­ping and pack­ing, so even if it feels like I’m only there half the day, I prob­a­bly did more work those days than any of the full ones.) How­ev­er, if a job tru­ly does­n’t need me until 8 pm or lat­er, or I can be walk­ing out on the last day at 10 am or ear­li­er, I am will­ing to do half-day dis­counts.

Cash: 5%
I can take checks or Pay­pal or Ven­mo, but if you hand me cash, I’ll knock off 5% from the final quote.

Food in the fridge: pos­si­bly as high as −$10/day
I usu­al­ly buy a lot of Trad­er Joe’s frozen din­ners before a job, but I’m a suck­er for a home-cooked meal—especially with lots of veg­eta­bles. We can talk about what things I might like and how much of a dis­count I’d give, or if you just want to offer up what was already in there any­way, but this dis­count can go as high as $10/day. I often adjust quotes if peo­ple say, “Feel free to eat what­ev­er.”

Super chill pets: −$5/day
Some pets are just super easy to han­dle. (Usu­al­ly it’s a job with ONE cat.) They don’t need much atten­tion, they don’t need to be walked, they don’t need a box clean­ing every sin­gle day, and I’m basi­cal­ly just there to keep their food bowl full and be warm pet fur­ni­ture.

More?
Most dis­counts tend to be more per­son­al and less easy to antic­i­pate. I’ve giv­en small dis­counts for every­thing from allow­ing overnight guests to hav­ing the lat­est con­sole hooked up to a big-screen TV with a game I’m excit­ed to try.

Oth­er ser­vices

Clean­ing
Of course, I clean up after myself, and I’ll even take a swipe at the hair­balls if you’ve got a shed‑y pet. If I stay more than a cou­ple of nights, I’ll wash any linens I’ve used (if there is a wash­ing machine avail­able), but if you want more clean­ing done, I can do that as well. Go on vaca­tion and come home to a clean place! I will need to see the job to give a quote.

Light clean­ing: $25/hr
Heavy/deep clean­ing: $35/hr

Caretaking/Yard work
I will need to see the job to give a quote.

Light yard work: $30/hr
Heavy yard work: $35/hr

Chauf­feur
Do you need a ride to or from the air­port? Does some­one need a ride while you’re gone? Do you need a pack­age deliv­ered, mail dropped off, or some­thing sim­i­lar?

Dri­ving ser­vices: $30/hr + 50¢/mile

This is a lot and sort of com­pli­cat­ed. I get it. I will be hap­py to ask you a few ques­tions and give you a quote that is fair to me and as much a val­ue to you as I can give. I hope this just gives you an idea of how to esti­mate my rates for your­self.

Note: Due to the nature of pet sit­ting, many peo­ple book weeks and even months in advance, and a booked date that is can­celled (or changed to a reduced time) at the last minute is very unlike­ly to be filled. For this rea­son, I ask for half pay­ment for book­ings can­celled with few­er than 72 hours remain­ing before they were to begin.