Lisa is awesome with cats but not great with humans, sadly. Our feral-turned-indoor-princess is…read morevery skeptical of humans, but she loved Lisa. Despite Lisa's serious communication issues and difficulty processing feedback, we were content to keep her on forever, simply because the cats loved her. But then she fired us as we were about to go out of town and refused to inform us whether she intended to honor her pre-existing commitments. Some background: It was often a struggle to understand what Lisa wanted. Lisa doesn't like being texted on vacation, but she has little issue texting clients about personal things on their vacation. She sometimes insists you use the app, while feeling free to contact you via text message at other times. She'd get frustrated if we didn't pay the right Zelle account, but she gave us both accounts. Sometimes, one would not work so we'd use the other. This was one of many matters prompting Lisa to snap at my wife, a common occurrence. My wife is not rude or demanding. She is to the point and simply trying to communicate, especially on vacation. On a few occasions, Lisa's terse replies had my wife on the verge of tears. The real problems escalated over a plant, though. My wife propagates plants on our window sills. Lisa asked if she could have one in exchange for her plant-watering fee. My wife said OK, but she'd need to wait. Our friend in Asheville had lost EVERYTHING in the recent flooding, and many of the plants my wife was propagating were earmarked for her friend. My wife planned to give Lisa two plants from her next batch and even intended to plant them in fancy pots as a thank you for the care Lisa has shown for our cats. Well, Lisa got impatient. On a recent vacay, Lisa kept texting my wife about a plant. A bit annoyed because Lisa doesn't like getting texts on her own vacations, my wife told me she'd deal with it later. When we got home, Lisa had not only taken a plant, but had taken the biggest one. She'd also taken the wrong plant, mistaking a coin plant for a money tree. She'd left a note saying she'd taken it because my wife hadn't replied. Where on Earth is that tantamount to permission? Anyway, my wife sent her a text saying she could keep the plant but in the future she should wait for a reply. Lisa did not like this. I was on the couch when she arrived. Lisa put the plant on the porch with a note. I knew my wife told her to keep it so I motioned through a window "no" as she set it down. She shook her head and made haste back to her car. As I was opening the front door to call to her, she took off with a little squeal. The note said she didn't want to wait for the plants my wife intended for her, that she wanted to give one to one of her friends now. She added that she didn't want a plant at all because it would bring "bad juju" to her house. In my mind, taking a plant without permission would be the source of bad juju, but what do I know? After this incident, Lisa became noticeably shorter. Her reports weren't quite so friendly. Sometimes her messages were incomprehensible. We couldn't make sense of them. She gave our furbaby with a pancreas disease the wrong food serving, despite us updating it in the app. There were other issues, most of them minor, but she was clearly annoyed. Again, what mattered most to us is the cats liked her. Lisa was slated for an upcoming visit, so I told my wife that Lisa hadn't closed the cat food properly -- she left the top of a 17-pound bag gaping open with a chip clip hanging off its side -- and she'd failed to close our broken fridge door properly, even though we'd left her a note, which disappeared for some reason. These were small, basic things, just a little constructive feedback as we didn't want the cat food or food in the fridge to spoil. Lisa did not agree. She wrote a text screed complaining that we didn't inform her earlier and FIRING US. Shocked, my wife wrote back that that was fine, but would she still honor her upcoming commitments? My wife sent multiple notes. Lisa didn't respond until two days before we left. We'd found another sitter by then, which for those in the know, is a huge hurdle when you're getting ready to leave town (catsitters need a meet-and-greet before taking on new clients). Lisa said she hadn't seen the messages in the app that she demanded we use! This, after much complaining that we weren't using the app properly (we thought we were). When my wife explained we found another sitter, Lisa, within what seemed like minutes, complained that we were hurting her reputation by telling another catsitter about our experience and later cut us off from the app (so, now, we couldn't copy and paste info and instructions for other catsitters who use the same app). After all this malarkey, we are kind of relieved she fired us and have found two awesome catsitters to take her place.
