A veiled chameleon is a poor candidate for vague instructions. It drinks in a particular way, hides stress well, and depends on a misting rhythm that a sitter visiting once a day must reproduce without improvising. The document you leave is therefore a faithful copy of your own established routine: your misting times, your durations, your supplement rotation, written so clearly that a careful sitter can run the day exactly as you would, and knows the moment something falls outside the script.
Write the Misting Page First
List every misting session in the day in clock order, with the time and the duration you use for each one, exactly as your routine runs at home, for example an early session after lights-on and a later session in the afternoon if that is your pattern. State the method you use, hand mister or automatic system, where to aim the water, and how the enclosure should look when a session is done: leaves beaded with droplets and the floor not left flooded. Note the dripper, if you run one, including where it drips and how the sitter refills it.
Explain Drinking From Droplets
Tell the sitter plainly that a veiled chameleon typically will not drink from a standing bowl the way many reptiles do. Your chameleon drinks droplets from leaves during and after misting, lapping water from wet foliage, so a misting session that is cut short is also a drinking opportunity lost. The sitter should watch long enough to see the chameleon move toward wet leaves or begin drinking, and note whether drinking happened at that visit, since a sitter who knows the normal pace will notice a half-hearted effort.
Record the Supplement Rotation Exactly as You Run It
Write the supplement rotation as a day-by-day grid copied from your own routine: which feeders are offered on each day, what you dust them with on that day, and how you present them, in a feeder cup, by tongs, or free in the enclosure as you normally do. Describe it as your established routine throughout, and instruct the sitter to follow the grid literally and change nothing, not the product, not the amount, and not the day order, even if a day looks like a repeat. Mark any gut-loading you do for feeder insects, with the timing you use, and name in advance the single substitute feeder you approve if a type runs out.
Give the Visit a Checklist in Order
Because the sitter comes once a day, order matters, and a checklist keeps the single visit complete. A workable order is: check lights are on and temperatures read in your normal range, mist the first session fully, offer feeders prepared to that day's place in the rotation, refill the dripper, mist again if your routine calls for it at that visit, then do a calm visual check of the chameleon and the enclosure. End with cleanup of uneaten feeders after your stated interval, a note of droppings, and the written log line for the day covering misting, feeding, drinking, and anything unusual. Keep your phone number and your veterinarian's number at the top of the same page.
Name What to Flag the Same Day
Close the packet with a flag list that tells the sitter what never waits until tomorrow. Flag refused food across a full visit, no drinking seen, eyes that look sunken or stay closed in daytime, dark or unusually stressed coloring that does not lift, a fall, wheezing or gaping, or equipment failure in lights, heat, or the mister. For each flag, the instruction is the same: message or call you the same day and follow the backup step you have written, such as a spare bulb location or the veterinarian's number for breathing signs. KinsLe's Pet Passport keeps those routine pages complete for the sitter and current for the next trip.