Come, stay: Pet sitters find a market niche in Cape Girardeau

When people have to leave their pets, they have an alternative besides kennels, relatives or friends.

For Cape Girardeau pet owner Jane Courter, hiring a professional pet sitter was the ideal solution to caring for her 5-year-old border collie-lab mix, Eddie, when she couldn't be with him.

Courter relies on Pet Guardian, a Cape Girardeau pet sitting service that Kathy Kinder started seven years ago. Kinder provides all of the services herself.

Courter wouldn't dream of kenneling Eddie as long as Kinder is available, she said.

"She has been a lifesaver for me with her flexibility and willingness to step up to help out with Eddie," she said. "I'd be lost without her."

The pet-care industry has been growing, enough to form its own trade group, the National Association of Professional Pet Sitters. The New Jersey-based association offers support, training and services to pet sitters nationwide.

NAPPS executive director Felecia Lembesis said membership has increased every year since its inception in 1996. Today it has 1,800 members, a trend Lembesis expects will continue.

"I think so because only 3 percent of pet owners use pet sitters," she said, leaving a lot of room for growth.

Pet Guardian offers daily in-home visits up to four times each day, overnight stays, doggie day care and 24-hour care in her home. Prices start at $9 for each 20-minute visit for in-home care in Cape Girardeau and increase depending on the type of service required and type of care needed based on individual assessments.

The price of Pet Guardian's in-home services includes bringing in mail and newspapers, watering plants, taking the trash out and making the house looked lived in by rotating lights.

Kinder, a lifelong pet owner, said that after caring for the pets of friends and family for 10 years, thought there was a demand in Cape Girardeau for a professional sitter who could provide reliability, flexibility and peace of mind for pet owners.

To date she has 75 clients and recently moved to a larger house to take in more dogs in her doggy day care and 24-hour care services. She cares mostly for dogs and cats, but will care for other animals as well.

"I had one call for a potbellied pig," she said. "And one time I had to gather eggs from chickens on a farm. Another time I took care of four miniature donkeys."

She has found her clients prefer her services to kenneling or relying on family or friends to take care of their pets, which inspired her business slogan of "a better alternative to boarding your pets."

Nancy Simminger, also of Cape Girardeau, started her business with a friend in 1994 out of her passion for animals. For the first three years the company, Pet Care Plus, was busy enough to justify hiring an employee. When Simminger's partner moved away, she scaled back on her clients so she could spend time with her family.

Today her service focuses on in-home visits, starting at $10, for pet owners who are away on business trips or vacation, which gives her the flexibility she wants.

Simminger said the demand in Cape Girardeau for pet sitters is significant. Listed in the Yellow Pages, she said she has to turn potential clients away to keep her part-time status.

"There really is a need for people who want people to come to their homes," she said.

Both services offer free initial visits, where sitters meet pet owners and their pets in their home. Vital information is gathered about the pet's health, diet and exercise needs.

Angela Roley of Cape Girardeau has relied on Pet Care Plus for the past two years for her two Rottweilers, Utombo and Kilinda, and two cats.

She recommends anyone thinking of using a pet-sitting service to interview the potential sitter as if they were hiring a baby sitter for their children.

"See how they bond with the animal and how they play with them," she said.

Roley said it costs less to have Pet Care Plus come to her home than to board them.

"I would never go back to a kennel," she said. "They don't have to be in a cage, and the dogs can play in their own yard. I definitely see a difference between a kennel and a sitter when I come home."

carel@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127