What to Ask Before Hiring a Cat Sitter in Columbia, MO

If you search for advice on hiring a cat sitter, you will find the same checklist everywhere: ask if they are insured, ask if they are pet first aid certified, ask for references. That advice is fine as far as it goes. The problem is that it does not go very far anymore.

Insurance and a first aid card are table stakes. They tell you a sitter has met the minimum, not that they are the right person to hand a key and your cat's wellbeing. After more than a decade caring for Columbia's cats, we can tell you the questions that actually separate professional operations from well-meaning hobbyists, and most of them never make the standard lists.

Ask them all, including of us. A true professional will not flinch at a single one.

Start with the basics, then keep going

Yes, ask the standard questions first. Are you licensed, bonded, and insured, and can I see proof? Are your sitters background checked? Are they trained in pet first aid and CPR? Any professional answers these instantly and in writing.

But here is the thing: in 2026, almost everyone who wants your business will say yes to all of the above. The questions below are where the answers start to differ.

Do you follow PSI's Global Standards?

This one is new, and most pet owners have never heard of it. In late 2025, Pet Sitters International, the industry's leading professional association since 1994, released the first publicly available Global Standards for Professional Pet-Sitting and Dog-Walking Businesses. For the first time, there is a published, industry-wide benchmark covering everything from business legitimacy and insurance to animal care, emergency preparedness, client privacy, and professional conduct.

Why does that matter to you? Because pet sitting is an unregulated industry. There is no license to practice, no board, no inspector. Anyone can print business cards tomorrow. The Global Standards are the closest thing this profession has to the benchmarks you would expect in child care or veterinary medicine, and whether a company knows about them, let alone follows them, tells you immediately how seriously they take the profession.

We are proud PSI members, and the standards are not a stretch goal for us. They describe how we already operate.

What software do you use, and what will I actually see?

"I'll text you updates" is not a system. It is a promise that depends entirely on one person remembering to make it.

A professional operation runs on real pet care software. Ours is Time to Pet, and here is what that means in practice: your cat's full care profile, feeding instructions, medication schedule, vet information, and home details live in one secure place that every sitter on your account can access. Visits are scheduled, tracked, and time-stamped. After every single visit, you get a written report with photos, automatically, whether or not anyone remembered to text.

It also means your payment, your schedule changes, and your conversation history are all in one app instead of scattered across text threads. When you interview a sitter, ask what happens to your cat's care instructions if their phone dies. If the answer is a shrug, that is your answer.

Can you guarantee every visit happens? Not "usually." Every one.

This is the question solo sitters cannot honestly answer yes to, and it is the single biggest difference between hiring a person and hiring a team.

A solo sitter, however wonderful, is one flat tire, one flu, one family emergency away from your cat missing a visit while you are a thousand miles away. Most will tell you they have "a backup," which usually means a friend your cat has never met and you have never vetted.

A professional, employee-based team can make a promise a solo operator structurally cannot: your visits are guaranteed. If your regular sitter is sick, a trained teammate who has access to your cat's full care profile steps in, and the visit happens on schedule. At Creature Comforts, that has been the standard since 2013. Backup coverage is not a favor we arrange. It is how the company is built.

When you are interviewing, ask exactly this: "What happened the last time one of your sitters couldn't make a visit?" The answer will tell you everything.

Are your sitters employees or contractors?

This sounds like an accounting question. It is actually a care question.

Employees are trained by the company, held to the company's standards, covered by the company's insurance and workers compensation, and accountable to a manager. Contractors, including everyone on the national gig apps, are independent operators the platform may never have met. Training, consistency, and accountability are whatever that individual decides they are.

Our team members are W-2 employees who complete dozens of hours of training before they ever care for a client's cat solo. That is expensive to do and completely invisible in a search result, which is exactly why you have to ask.

Do you actually know cats?

Cats are not small dogs, and plenty of "pet sitters" are dog people who also do cats. It matters. A stressed cat does not whine at the door; she goes silent, hides, and stops eating, and an untrained eye misses all of it. We wrote about what trained feline care actually looks like in our guide to professional in-home cat care, but in an interview, a few questions surface it quickly:

• How do you approach a cat who hides for your whole first visit?

• What early signs of a urinary blockage do you watch for?

• Can you give pills, insulin, and subcutaneous fluids?

• How do you handle a multi-cat home where one cat guards the food?

A cat-competent professional will light up at these questions. Someone who mostly walks dogs will improvise.

What does a visit include, and how often do you recommend coming?

Ask for the specific list: feeding, water, litter, medication, play, a wellness check, home care like mail and lights. Then ask how often they recommend visiting and listen for whether the answer is about your cat or their calendar. A professional will recommend at least once daily for healthy adults and twice daily for kittens, seniors, cats on medication, and many multi-cat homes, for reasons we covered in our guide on how long you can leave a cat alone. Anyone who cheerfully agrees to every-other-day visits to win your booking is telling you whose interests come first.

Will we meet before the first booking?

A meet and greet at your home, before any care happens, should be non-negotiable. It is where the sitter learns your cat's routine, where you watch how they move around your cat, and where your cat gets a vote. If a provider wants to skip straight to booking, keep looking.

The short version

Print this and bring it to every interview, ours included:

1. Licensed, bonded, insured, background checked, first aid and CPR certified, with proof?

2. Do you follow PSI's Global Standards for professional pet care businesses?

3. What software tracks my cat's care, and what do I see after each visit?

4. Are visits guaranteed, and what happened last time a sitter was out sick?

5. Employees or contractors?

6. What is your specific experience and training with cats?

7. What exactly does a visit include, and what frequency do you recommend for my cat?

8. Can we do a meet and greet at my home first?

Frequently asked questions

What questions should I ask a cat sitter before hiring? Beyond insurance and first aid certification, ask whether they follow PSI's Global Standards, what software documents each visit, whether visits are guaranteed by a backup team, whether sitters are employees or contractors, and what specific training they have with cats.

What are PSI's Global Standards? Released by Pet Sitters International in late 2025, they are the first publicly available industry-wide standards for professional pet-sitting and dog-walking businesses, covering business legitimacy, insurance, animal care, emergency preparedness, client privacy, and professional conduct.

Is a solo cat sitter or a company better? Solo sitters can be excellent, but only a team can structurally guarantee that a sick day never means a missed visit. For trips where you cannot easily get home, guaranteed coverage matters most.

How do I know a cat sitter is legitimate? Look for proof of insurance and bonding, background-checked staff, membership in a professional association like PSI, documented visits through professional software, and a required meet and greet before care begins.

Do you offer cat sitting in Columbia, MO? Yes. Cat sitting is one of our most requested services, covering central and south Columbia and nearby communities. Every visit is documented in Time to Pet with photos and notes.

Ask us all eight

We built Creature Comforts to answer every question on this list without hesitation, and we would genuinely rather you interview us hard than book on faith. Schedule a meet and greet, bring the checklist, and let your cat make the final call.

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