Spots: Map Her Day, Not Just Her Bed
Start with where she actually spends time, hour by hour. Most cats run a circuit: the sunny windowsill mid-morning, the top of the stairs at school-run time, your pillow by night. Record the circuit in order, with the favourite in each room, because a sitter who knows where she 'should' be at 4 p.m. notices an absence at 4 p.m. — and absence is often the first sign something is wrong.
Separate claimed spots from tolerated ones. The cat bed you bought may rate a single line — 'ignores it' — while the laundry basket gets a paragraph. Honest entries like that stop a well-meaning carer coaxing her into places she dislikes and calling her difficult. Note seasonal moves too: radiator-adjacent in winter, the cool hallway tiles in summer, so nobody worries when the circuit shifts with the weather.
Foods: Likes, Refusals and Hard Rules
Write the food section in three layers. First, the reliable core: the meals she finishes happily, in the textures she prefers — some cats accept only pâté, others want chunks and leave jelly, and that level of detail decides whether a stand-in carer feeds a contented cat or a suspicious one. Second, the refusals: flavours sniffed and abandoned, the treats she spits out, so nobody wastes money or worry on them.
Third, and set apart clearly, the hard rules: foods and household items she must never be given, anything a vet has told you to avoid for her specifically, and scavenging habits to guard against — the bin she raids, the other pet's bowl she targets. Make this section unmissable in the profile, because it is the part a new reader must absorb even if they skim everything else.
Fears: Triggers, Signals and What Helps
Record fears as a chain: trigger, signal, remedy. The trigger list is specific — the vacuum, the doorbell, tall visitors in hats, the carrier appearing, fireworks in the street. Beside each, write what her fear looks like: flattened ears and a low dash, hiding until evening, or loud vocal protest from a safe height. Same trigger, different cat, completely different picture — yours is the one that belongs in the profile.
Then the remedies that genuinely work for her, learned from experience: being left alone in her refuge with the door ajar, a familiar voice from the next room, a treat trail once the noise stops, a covered bed she can vanish into. Cross out what does not work, too — being picked up mid-panic, being dragged out to meet the visitor — so a kind carer does not repeat your early mistakes with the best intentions.
Keep the Profile Alive as She Changes
Preferences are not permanent. The kitten who feared everyone becomes the adult who supervises visitors from the stairs; the food adored for a year gets refused in a month. Date each section, review the profile every few months, and strike through changed entries rather than deleting them — the history of a fading fear or a shifting appetite is itself useful information for a vet or behaviour conversation later.
Invite the household to contribute. A partner who notices she has started sleeping in the airing cupboard, or a child who discovers the one game she never refuses, adds the line. Profiles written by one observer miss the cat other people know.
One Profile Everyone Reads
Keep the three sections together as her single profile and point every carer to it — sitter, housemate, family — rather than letting fragments live in text messages. When her world is described in one place, the small personal knowledge that makes care gentle stops depending on your memory and your presence.
Held as one shared profile through KinsLe Family Sharing, her spots, foods and fears stay visible to the whole family in the same place, so whoever feeds her tonight knows exactly what the rest of you have learned.