Pet Sitters in Japan

From the Angels with Fur Japan mailing list:

Question

Can anyone please tell me if there are pet-sitting businesses in Japan? If so, do you know how much they would cost?

We have PetSmart over here in the US that has daycare services for pets and a pet hotel for them when you need to go out of town — they feed/water them, clean their kitty condos and play with them daily. Are there any services like that in Japan?

Answer 1

The Angels with Fur Japan mailing list has a pet-sitters/dog walkers database you can look at. (You must be a member of the list to view the database.)

Answer 2

We found our cat-sitter through the Japan Pet Sitter Service website.

It’s all in Japanese, so it depends on your fluency. We were able
to do a search on the website and find a pet sitter locally. Then we called her and set up an appointment to meet with her and introduce our “kids”.

I don’t know if they have a set pricing system or if it varies, but we paid 3780 yen for one day – for 3 cats (feeding, cleaning up, playing, etc.), plus the transportation fee and a small extra percentage for being during a busy holiday time. She writes reports for each day she comes over, so we know if one of the “kids” didn’t eat so much or threw up or whatnot.

Answer 3

I use Kitty Smile for our cats. She comes in to feed, play and clean up, including daily kitty report/pix via email. I’ve been using her services for 3 years now and very happy with her. She charges about 2,500 per day/one visit. She provides discounts for multiple cats and multiple days. We have 4 cats and normally pay about 3,000 yen per day.

New Aw/F FAQ: Travelling with Pets

Angels with Fur is trying to build up a list of “frequently asked questions” (FAQs) about pets in Japan. We’re starting off small, but hopefully we’ll be able to build up a good collection after a while. If you want to contribute questions or answers to the list, please contact us!

Our first FAQ is on a topic that affects a good majority of the people on the Aw/F mailing list: travelling with pets. Many of our members have travelled to and from Japan with pets, so they are a good source of information for this particular topic. We hope you find the FAQ useful!

>>FAQ: Travelling with Pets