A sitter who stays in your home has one benefit no cattery can offer: she feeds your cat in the kitchen where the routine was built, from the cupboards where the food actually lives, using the scoop that sits in the bag. Your feeding notes should exploit that setting instead of reading like a generic summary. The six entries remain what they have always been: precisely which food and flavor she eats, the texture it is served in, how much belongs in each meal in your household's measures, the times those meals happen, which treats are approved, and what she must never be given. What changes before a sitter stay is how completely each entry is tied to places, objects and moments in your home.
Writing the Notes for Your Counter, Not a File
Go through the entries standing where the sitter will stand. The exact food and flavor should be followed by where it lives: which cupboard, which shelf, and which of several similar bags or boxes is hers, because kitchens accumulate other pets' food, old flavors and treats in lookalike packaging. Its texture should be described as it will be seen, so the sitter knows the opened pouch should look like chunks in gravy rather than a smooth loaf, and can spot a wrong pouch before it reaches the bowl. The amount per meal in your household's measures can stay in those measures here, unlike in a cattery's instructions, because the sitter will use your scoop and your tins; still write the measure fully, one level scoop, half of the large pouch, so confidence does not depend on watching you once and remembering perfectly.
Meal times should be written with the household rhythm around them: before you leave for work becomes a clock time, and the evening meal should carry its real-world anchor, such as when the sitter returns. Approved treats need a location and a limit, the jar on the counter and a number per day, plus a note if treats are how you coax her from a hiding place on the first evening. Anything she must never be given should name the actual hazards present in your home, including other food in the fridge or a houseplant she chews, since a general warning protects less than a specific one tied to your shelves.
Showing One Meal Beats Describing Three
Before you leave, feed her once with the sitter watching and reading the notes at the same time. Discrepancies announce themselves in that single demonstration: the notes say warm the food slightly and you have never written where the bowl goes, or they omit that she eats in two sittings with a pause between. Correct the sheet on the spot, in pen, because the sitter will trust a visibly corrected sheet more than a pristine one that contradicts what she just watched. Leave the notes on the counter by the food, not in a folder in another room, and keep a photo of the final version on your phone so questions can be answered against the identical text.
Have the sitter's agreed terms set down in writing before the stay, covering the dates, duties including feeding exactly as written, the fee and the plan if the sitter must leave early. Written terms and written notes reinforce each other: the agreement promises the routine will be followed, and the notes define what following it means in your kitchen, scoop by scoop.
After the Stay, Fold the Lessons Back In
Ask the sitter afterwards what confused her, what she had to improvise, and whether any measure or time proved impractical in real life. Amend the notes with what you learn, keeping the six entries intact and the household measures unchanged, so the record stays comparable stay after stay. Then the next sitter inherits instructions tested in your kitchen by someone other than you, which is as close as a document gets to being proven. Pet Passport in KinsLe stores this home-sitter version of her feeding notes as part of her permanent record, ready to print for the next stay without another rewrite.