A first cattery stay hands her care to people who have never met her, in a building she has never seen, while you may be on a plane or out of signal. The contact list you leave behind stops being a memory aid for your household and becomes a working document for strangers under time pressure. Its five entries stay the same in kind: a mobile number for you with a second route to you, a nearby trusted person able to enter your home, your regular practice, the overnight service that practice points to, and the person or place caring for her at that moment. What changes is who fills one entry, and how carefully the others are verified.
The Cattery Becomes Her Current Carer
For the dates of the stay, whoever is currently caring for her is the cattery. Write that plainly into the record, with the cattery's own name and number sitting in the carer entry, because in an emergency involving several boarded cats the staff need her file to state who holds responsibility and how they themselves are reached out of hours. When you collect her, the entry reverts to you; leaving the cattery named as carer weeks after she is home creates confusion for the next person who reads the list. Date-bound entries are the habit to build here: the carer line describes now, not generally.
Ask the cattery, when you book, exactly which contact details they want at check-in and in what form, and get the cattery's agreed terms confirmed in writing at the same time, covering the stay dates, feeding arrangements, fees and what happens if you are delayed returning. Facilities often keep their own admission form, and your list should answer their form without contradiction, so any difference between the two documents gets resolved before drop-off rather than at the desk.
Checking Your Own Entries as the Cattery Will Use Them
Review your own lines through the cattery's eyes. Your mobile plus a second number for you must both be numbers you will genuinely answer during the trip, which may rule out a work phone left behind or a number that diverts to a full mailbox. State which number to try first and when the second should be used, and say honestly if there will be hours when neither reaches you, because staff plan around known gaps far better than around surprises. Your trusted nearby person who can get into your home matters more during a stay than usual: if you cannot be reached, that person is the cattery's route to decisions, to her carrier at home, or to collecting her early in a family emergency, so warn her or him about the stay dates in advance.
The veterinary pair needs confirming rather than copying. Your usual vet should be the practice the cattery is authorized to call, and it is worth telling that practice she will be boarding, so a call from the cattery is expected rather than questioned. The out-of-hours service must be the current overnight arrangement for that practice, checked recently, since a cattery working at night cannot chase a chain of diverted numbers. If the cattery uses a different emergency arrangement under its own terms, note both clearly and say which takes priority, so nobody wastes the opening minutes deciding who to phone.
Leaving a List That Survives Check-In
Bring the list printed as well as held digitally, hand it over in person, and watch it go into her file rather than assuming a bag pocket will do. Read the numbers aloud once at the desk while a member of staff follows on their copy, a small ritual that catches transposed digits better than any amount of careful typing at home. Keep your own copy identical to theirs, so any conversation during the stay quotes the same entries. On collection, update the carer entry back to yourself the same day, while the stay is still fresh in mind. Pet Passport in KinsLe stores the five checked entries as the single current version, ready to print again for the next stay without starting the checks from scratch.