Hi, I’m Kayla. Since college I’ve spent my weekends pet-sitting, for about 40 families in Milwaukee so far. Every house starts with a note on the fridge, and those notes have taught me more about dogs and cats than any book. My favorite: “Peanut will tell the Newfoundland when it’s dinner. Do not let Peanut lie to you.”
What I write about
Where my stories come from
I carry my clients’ keys on one carabiner. One of those homes belongs to a baker whose corgi starts her shift at 4 a.m. and greets the first customer at six. Another family’s border collie walks the kids to the school bus every morning and waits until the doors close.
How I write
I won’t pretend to know what a dog is thinking. I’ll tell you what it did, and I’ll quote the fridge note.
Off the clock
I live in Milwaukee’s Bay View with Pickles, a beagle mix whose shelter card said “shy, needs time” (he climbed into my lap in the parking lot), and Pierogi, a cat. Their rule: whoever gets there first gets the bathroom rug, and the other one gets the radiator.
How we check our stories: Editorial Standards and Ethics.
One of my pet-sitting families has a border collie who walks the kids to the school bus every morning and waits until the doors close. The fridge note says, “Do not pay her in treats or she’ll ask for a raise.” These 10 animals have real jobs, from goats on a fire crew to beavers who build dams for free, and the people who hired them have the numbers.
Pickles came home from the shelter with a card on his kennel that said “shy, needs time,” and he climbed into my lap in the parking lot before I found my keys. The card is still on my fridge, under my own note: “not shy.” These 12 celebrities adopted rescue animals, from a German shepherd puppy who went through three names to a runaway piglet won at an auction.
My cat, Pierogi, spent his first month with us hiding under the radiator from my beagle mix, Pickles. Then one Sunday I found them asleep on the same bath mat, and neither of them has explained it since. These 10 unlikely pet friendships live under one roof, from a bearded dragon and a cat to a frog that bosses around a python, and their owners explain how each animal friendship started.
