I just received a message from a client wanting to watch his 5 cats. He is about 9 miles from me and all he wants me to do is visit 1 time a day for 9 days to clean litter and feed them. What would you charge for this?
Hi, Blakelee! While I don't normally charge for additional cats, I would probably suggest doing so in this case since he has 5. That will likely entail a lot of litter clean up! I see that your normal cat rate is $10, but that seems extremely low for you to drive an 18 mile round trip in addition to the care required for the 5 cats. I think personally I would charge a minimum of $20/day, but since there are so many, perhaps bump it to $25. You could also get a feel for how much work you think it would be at the Meet & Greet, to see how many litter boxes there are and if any of the cats have special feeding requirements to merit the additional $5.
I personally do not accept drop ins that are more than 5 miles from my house. Take into consideration your total drive time and mileage (wear and tear on auto, gas, etc). That being said, I would think that 5 cats would be as much work as 1-2 dogs so I would charge double my drop in rate of $15, which would be $30 per visit. Like Hillary said, the M&G should tell you how much work is involved and determine if you want to do this.
In college I charged $5-10 per day, but I was walking distance. I would ask them for $15/day considering the distance you will be driving. They should understand and feel that is reasonable! Cats are so easy to take care of whether there are 1 or 10.