A first visit tells you more in forty quiet minutes than a week of messages, provided you spend it watching rather than performing. Resist the urge to sell your cats, excuse their shyness or fill every silence with reassurance. Set the house up as it will be during the stay, make tea, and let the sitter's behaviour, your cats' behaviour and the building itself supply the evidence you are actually booking on.
Watch the Questions the Sitter Asks
An experienced sitter interviews you harder than you interview them. Listen for questions about feeding amounts and times, tray routines, medicines, vet details, hiding habits, escape risks and what each cat does when frightened. Those questions reveal a mental checklist built by real bookings, including bookings that went wrong and taught lessons. A sitter who asks almost nothing, and spends the visit promising that cats adore them, is showing you enthusiasm where you needed method. Ask directly what they would do if a cat hid for the entire first visit of a booking, because the answer separates patience from door-opening improvisation faster than any hypothetical about feeding.
Notice practical habits as they happen. Do they write things down or photograph the feeding station? Do they ask where the carrier lives and how each cat is got into it? Do they repeat your instructions back accurately later in the conversation? Small acts of recording and checking predict how your written routine will be treated when nobody is watching, which is the entire point of hiring a sitter rather than a neighbour with a key.
Let the Cats Set the Terms of Contact
The cats are never fetched from under furniture, carried into the room or held up for inspection. They approach, sniff and leave entirely freely, on their own timetable, and their choices are information rather than a test the sitter must pass by charming them. A confident cat who inspects the visitor and resumes her nap is telling you the household can relax around this person. A shy cat who watches from the doorway is giving a normal, workable answer too.
What should concern you is sustained flight, hiding that outlasts the visit, or a sitter who cannot resist pursuing contact: crouching into hiding places, dragging toys into a frightened cat's refuge, or picking up a cat who has already declined twice. Cats booked with a sitter they spent the whole visit escaping start the trip stressed and hidden, and some stop eating. The sitter who sits still, lets sniffing happen at ankle height and accepts being ignored has understood the job.
Walk the House as the Sitter Will Find It
Finish with a slow walkthrough of the house in working order. Show the hiding spots each cat uses, so a sitter who cannot find a cat at teatime knows where to check calmly before panicking. Go through doors and windows one by one: which stay shut, which stick, which a determined cat can nudge. Point out the tray and feeding stations where they actually are, with quantities demonstrated rather than described, and show where food, litter and cleaning supplies live.
End the walkthrough by agreeing visit times, update arrangements, the emergency plan and payment, and get the provider's agreed terms confirmed in writing before any booking is treated as final. A sitter who welcomes written terms is showing the same professionalism their questions suggested. Once you decide to book, that Care Pass from KinsLe gives your chosen sitter scoped access which ends when the stay does.