We are a youthful, recently retired female couple, who would like to travel for weeks at a time, and have a mature, reliable, non-smoking person live in our condo while we are away.
We would prefer an experienced housesitter. Duties include caring for our cat (age 14), watering indoor and outdoor plants (we have a large deck upstairs), collecting mail, and doing light housecleaning as needed.
We are close to public transportation and walking distance to shopping and restaurants in the Rockridge area. Our condo has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room, kitchen, and an upstairs loft with a view of San Francisco, Bay and Golden Gate bridges and an adjacent deck. It's very quiet here and in a nice neighborhood.
We have held off making future travel plans until we can find reliable housesitters. In the past, we used a petsitting service for two visits/day for vacations of a week to 10 days. It has become prohibitively expensive to do that now, especially for longer trips. Also, our cat needs more attention and human interaction than a petsitter can provide on short daily visits.
Ideally, we would like to find someone we trusted, and felt comfortable with (and s/he with us), and have an ongoing housesitting arrangement for these occasional trips--planned well in advance, of course.