Pet-Sitter Tucks Fifi in Crib If You Can’t
Flo King baby-sits animals. She runs a business called Critter Keepers Sitter Service for the pet owner who just can’t bear the thought of boarding a dog or cat in a kennel, in a wire cage with only food and water for company.
King’s clients want something more: a woman who will pet and coo to a cockateel or a German shepherd and accommodate any pet owner’s whim, no matter how silly or bizarre.
One of King’s 50 clients has a turtle that devours pink roses. King has to make sure plenty of pink roses are available when she arrives once a day to look in on a tortoise to whom a rose is a rose is a rose, but only if it’s pink.
King feeds peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to dogs, some of whom demand them as avidly as 3-year-old boys.
At one client’s home, she puts a poodle to bed in a crib made for a baby. The client--Kay Everett, a 70-year-old widow who lives in North Park--has three dogs and two cats. Everett adores King, who says she ends up being friends with most of her clients and confesses that that was actually a motive in starting her business three years ago.
King, 50, can be friends with clients--and new ones arrive every week--as well as with a covey of barking, clawing, cooing amigos who respond to her as though she had invented trust.
“I’m a funny person,” Everett said. “When I go on a trip, I have to have somebody with them at night. My animals are used to having me around, and I refuse to board them.”
Everett said King has filled a void by assuaging the fears people have about leaving their pets in a kennel. Others have picked up on the trend. King says she has three or four competitors, some headquartered in North County. She charges about $10 for one visit a day, $15 for a minimum of two visits and more for staying overnight. She has a number of regular clients whose pets she baby-sits on a “slumber party” basis.
“I love animals,” King said, getting to the crux of why she started Critter Keepers. “When they look at you, you can tell they care--right away. They don’t care if you’re black, white, purple, red or green. They don’t care what you have. They don’t care about your clothes or jewelry or what you do for a living.”
King, who lives alone, used to baby-sit for friends, but tired of the ways and needs of children. Animals don’t pose the same complications, and she prizes the time she can spend caring for them. Although she baby-sits birds and turtles and even snakes on occasion, her favorites are dogs and cats.
Everett said King impressed her right away with a manner she describes as impeccable and professional. Although King’s routine might seem humorous to some, it filled Everett with trust.
“I saw an ad in a newspaper, so that’s how I hired her,” Everett said. “She came in with a form and asked a whole bunch of questions. She wanted to know what the animals ate, what time they ate, when I took them out. She made arrangements on what to do in case of illness or death. The whole thing was remarkable. I knew right away, though, I could leave my babies with this gal and they would be fine.”
People Start Waving
King said clients hear about her through the Yellow Pages or ads in senior-citizen tabloids, word of mouth, or even from reading the painted sign on the side of her truck: Critter Keepers Sitter Service, whose motto is: “When it comes to your pets, only the best is good enough.”
The truck-sign method especially cracks her up. She’s happy when people see it and start waving and honking like it’s the happiest they’ve been in ages. She says a lot of them start writing down the phone number right away. She knows because she sees them do it in her rear-view mirror.
King does a lot of research. After a client calls her, she arranges a “pre-visit,” at which she “interviews” not only the client but also the pet. She acts as a kind of animal psychologist in ferreting out what she calls special needs. She asks about sensitive spots on the pet’s body, unique medical needs, places an animal might escape from the house or yard, and, of course, vitamins and strange nutritional needs.
“If an animal really wants peanut butter,” she said, “I give it to ‘em.”
Many of her clients are airline flight attendants or too-busy “yuppies” who just don’t have the time to take care of pets, even though they say they want one. These are the owners who aggravate King.
“If they don’t have the time or can’t take care of a pet properly, I just wish they wouldn’t have them,” she said.
King believes people need pets for comfort and protection, and she confesses that some people need them because they’re lonely to the point of desperation or have such intense problems with intimacy that relating to animals is just a whole lot easier and less painful than relating to people, especially those of the opposite sex.
These are the clients--and the pets--that King values the most. Not only will she stay overnight with poodles who sleep in cribs (and refuse to sleep anywhere else) but she will also drive them to beauty parlors and bath shops, run them on the beach or board them on airplanes.
“If you treat them well,” she said, “an animal will love you forever. And there’s nothing quite as special as an animal who loves you. Animals love unconditionally.”
