A sitter can follow instructions perfectly and still feed your cat wrong, because the instructions that matter most are the quirks no generic checklist mentions. Write the brief around your cat's actual habits, in the order a sitter's visit unfolds, and meals away from home stay close to meals with you in the kitchen.
The Bowl, the Place, and the Serving Routine
Start with the physical facts. Name the exact bowl the cat eats from and the exact place it is served, because many cats who refuse a meal in an unfamiliar dish or a moved location will eat the same food happily in the usual bowl on the usual mat. Describe the food itself and how it is served under your established routine: fresh from a newly opened portion or the remainder kept covered, warmed slightly or straight as it comes, offered all at once or in the stages your cat expects. The sitter's job is replication, not improvement, so write down the routine as you actually perform it, including the small steps you barely notice yourself doing.
If medication is part of mealtimes, it is given exactly as prescribed, in the way that already works for this cat, and the brief says so plainly with the veterinarian's details attached. Nothing about the food, the amounts, or the medication changes because the owner is away; any experiment waits until you are home to supervise it.
The Rituals: Watchers, Grazers, and Hiders
Now describe the cat. Some cats eat only when watched, settling to the bowl once a familiar person sits nearby, and a sitter who puts food down and leaves immediately may return to an untouched meal that has nothing to do with appetite. That cat needs the sitter to stay, unhurried, in the room. Other cats graze and return, eating a little, wandering off, and finishing across the evening; for that cat, food left down is the routine, and clearing the bowl after twenty minutes would cut every meal short.
A third common pattern matters most with strangers: the cat who hides at a sitter's footsteps and will not emerge while anyone unfamiliar is in the home. For that cat the brief should say to leave the food in the usual place, withdraw, and check later whether it has been eaten, rather than searching the home and dragging the cat to the bowl, which confirms every fear.
Freshness, Water, and What Refusal Means
Cover freshness plainly: how long served food stays down before it is replaced, how leftovers are handled between visits, and the water routine, bowls washed and refilled at each visit, placed where the cat actually drinks. A cat who drinks from one particular bowl, or who prefers water away from the food station, keeps those arrangements in the brief, because small displacements suppress drinking quietly.
Set the refusal rule in advance so the sitter never has to guess. A single refused meal gets noted, with the time and circumstances, rather than chased with substitute foods. A pattern of refusals gets reported to you the same day it becomes a pattern. And a cat eating nothing for a day or more is a prompt call to the owner and the veterinarian, made immediately rather than at the next scheduled visit, because appetite loss sustained over a full day deserves professional advice while you are away as much as while you are home. Include your veterinarian's number and your own contact order in the brief, so that call takes seconds.
That brief deserves the right delivery: the Care Pass access on KinsLe gives your one named sitter time-boxed, scoped entry to this feeding brief and the cat's essential details for the trip period only, ending when you return, so the person feeding your cat holds exactly the information the job needs and nothing beyond it.
Care Pass on KinsLe, opened for a named sitter across a defined trip, pairs the written feeding quirks with access that expires when the travel does.