Your cat's medication routine was set by your vet, and your task at boarding is not to improve it, reinterpret it or summarise it from memory. Your task is transmission: moving that written routine from your vet's page to the cattery's working day without a single detail changing in transit. Treat the handover the way you would want a relief carer to treat it, with the original wording preserved, the packaging to prove it, and a spoken check that the message arrived intact.
Copy the Written Routine Word for Word
Write out one sheet that carries the routine exactly as prescribed: how each item is given, what is given, the written times attached to it, and what should happen if your cat refuses or only partly takes what is offered. Add the practical details only you know, such as how your cat usually accepts the routine, what has worked when your cat turned away, and which member of your household to call with questions, without altering any element of the routine itself. If any part of the sheet is your own paraphrase, mark where the vet's wording ends and your notes begin, because staff must never have to guess which lines carry clinical authority. Give your vet's number on the same sheet with your clear permission for staff to call the practice directly, so a question goes to the source rather than being settled by guesswork at a busy check-in desk.
Original Packaging and a Supply Margin Protect the Routine
Send everything in the packaging it was dispensed in, original and labelled, with the label your vet or dispensing practice applied still attached and legible. Loose items in unmarked pots force staff to trust your memory instead of checking a label, and a checker who cannot verify should not be asked to give. Count out enough for the whole stay and then add a sensible margin beyond it, because travel delays, a spilled item or an extended booking should never leave your cat without what the routine requires. Tell staff plainly that the margin exists and where it is packed. If the routine involves anything that must be kept cool or kept apart from food, write that storage instruction on the sheet as well, in the same words your vet used when explaining it to you.
Read-Back at Check-In Closes the Loop
Ask, too, how the cattery handles a refusal, because a routine understood on paper can still wobble in practice. Staff should record each administration as it happens, note any refusal plainly rather than glossing over it, and phone you or your vet using the number on the sheet if a refusal repeats, instead of improvising a workaround of their own. Agree before the stay what you want to be told about during the stay and what can wait for a summary at collection, so important news reaches you promptly without the cattery guessing at your preference while your cat waits.
Arrive expecting a conversation, not a signature. Ask who actually gives medication at the cattery, at what point in their day the rounds happen, and how each completed administration is recorded, then ask that staff member to read your sheet back to you aloud. Read-back catches the errors that silent reading misses: a misread time, a misunderstood instruction, a step assumed rather than stated. Correct the sheet on the spot if the read-back differs from your vet's wording, and initial the correction together. During the stay, the cattery can keep the routine visible to the staff who need it through KinsLe, where Care Pass grants boarding staff access that is limited to the stay and to the routine alone, ending when the stay ends.