davidd's A DOLL A DAY 2024

[Alliecat]

Looking forward to seeing what this "dollhouse" turns into!
Maybe Janie would be more enthused if it was a house for her.  I assume it's 1/6 though?

D'you think anyone on that site would want to house sit a couple of cats for three weeks, or six weeks, or nine weeks in mid-winter? I've been looking at "discount cruises" online, and it turns out that one of my "life goals," an around the world cruise, might be more affordable than I ex-pected. Well... not exactly "affordable," but "less hideously ex-pensive."

Holy jumpin.  AROUND THE WORLD?? 

No, sitters aren't paid.  I'm surprised that isn't clear, but I haven't looked at the homeowner info pages.  We are ex-pected to do our own grocery shopping but often HO's will say "eat anything" in the fridge or cupboards; I haven't yet had someone tell me food is off limits.  If you eat the HO's food it is ex-pected -- and common courtesy -- to re-stock what you ate.

Leaving a car is up to the HO.  Depends on one's insurance and level of comfort in letting a stranger use their car.  The second TX couple offered, but only days before I was set to come, so of course I'd already rented one.  I have insurance for non-owned vehicles but generally prefer to rent because if something happened to the car I'd rather it was a rental and just on my side of things and not the HO's car because then that's a potential blot on my sitter record.  That would be something to work out individually with the sitter.
FOUR HOURS from an airport?  Yikes.  Worse than here.  I take it no connecting flights to your lil local airstrip 
Well, but look at the fabulous countryside and all the parks & canyons for people to ex-plore.  Someone interested in seeing the area might well be happy to have a base to sightsee from.  As for "lower-middle-class", well, as long as the place is clean, not bug-infested or stinky or freezing or full of trash... seriously, sitters just want a clean comfortable place to stay.  Posh McMansions are nice, but, there are lots of definitely-not-posh places listed.  I saw one in NS that was an off-grid tiny house where you had to haul water and it might've had an outhouse!  I don't know if she got a sitter!!

Also a lot of people prefer to sit cats because they're less demanding and don't need three 2-hour walks every day starting at 6 a.m. and be let in & out 15 times a day to pee, and sitters could go off and ex-plore that fabulous landscape and the cats would be OK for a few hours alone.

You could always try.  I think they have some sort of refund/guarantee if a HO doesn't get any applications (?).
This "should be" the discount link:  https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/refe...=copy-link&utm_medium=refer-a-friend&utm_campaign=refer-a-friend

On the subject of housesitting, I had a s**tshow of a sit on the weekend.  The cat & dog for the folks up the road again.  While I ex-pected the traffic noise, I did not ex-pect the absolutely thunderous stereo right next door, from the trashpile "house" some guys are trying to fix up.  It ran for about 15 hours out of the 27 that I was there.  I cannot seem to escape ridiculous noise no matter where I go 
And THEN, the dog got attacked by a couple of off-leash monsters and I spent the rest of the time doing first-aid duty.  Thank goodness it was just one night and now the owners are back to keep an eye on whether the hole in her leg gets infected.  [Insert Very Long Rant about idiots who let their large dogs run off-leash in public places, don't make an effort to grab them when they first show interest in other dogs/people, and then basically run away after it happens.  ]

One example of a "sitter" that I read said she only accepts pet-sits that are beachfront in tropical locations.

Hahaha, wut.  I wanna read that profile!

If When I get to a point where I don't have to use any house-sits for house-hunting, maybe I'll get pickier and only apply for beachfront McMansions