What happens when a chatty animal lover starts a pet sitting side gig and spends her busy days with no one else to talk to?

This.  This is what happens.  

I was a stay-at-home mom who became a divorced single parent in 2007 who then tried--and failed--to re-enter the workforce post-masters degree at exactly the Great Recession and suddenly in 2016 pet sitting became a career and I was spending all my days in the alternative reality of animals.   And I've grown up with animals and animal lovers.  Have had more pets than I can even remember and have done sitting for pets for a long time.  But in 2016, I was fully enmeshed in what can happen within the quiet potential of days and days of non-verbal interactions.  You begin to listen with different ears, you begin to see with different eyes, and you fill the empty spaces of the days as if it's the best and most engaged performance of your life.   You snap pics to share with families while chatting through visits as if narrating the theater of the pet's personality.   You tell them they're the most important thing in the world by writing their story out loud and by sharing their personality in text updates to families, on Instagram accounts @amythesitter, and on unnecessary consumables you hope won't burn the planet down.  

There are some slideshows here of various flavors and a reasonable amount of uncertainty about this whole endeavor.  But for now I've got to go visit Beau and Ruth, two kitties who are extra bored after I had to move the toxic schefflera they were snacking on into the upstairs guest bedroom so that they don't accidentally kill themselves. 

              Slideshow