We are a married couple who have lived in beautiful Wellington, New Zealand for 25 years. Rachel is a farmer's daughter from the East Coast of NZ and Paul is originally from Yorkshire, England. We have no children. When our two previous cats died within a few months of each other we fostered kittens from the SPCA - until we fell in love with one slightly damaged black kitten who is now our permanent companion (but not when we're on our travels - we will have people looking after him).
Rachel left her job as National Facilities Manager for a large insurance company a few years ago, and is now enjoying being a driver for a companion driving service.
Paul is a freelance software developer, working mainly for banks.
We are a well-travelled, responsible couple, we own our own home with a garden and we spend a lot of time keeping them both in good order. We would do the same for a house-sit - we're not afraid of lawnmowers. We both love animals of any variety. We are vegetarian and we don't smoke.
The plan for 2019 and 2020 is to arrange house-sits, and in-between to visit places we haven't seen yet and catch up with friends and family both in the UK and Europe.
Our previous big adventure was to take nine months travelling around South-East Asia, using Bangkok as a base, being the hometown of the Thai AFS student who we hosted for a year in 2004. Our trip was in 2012 but the blog we kept is still online at the link shown in our profile - have a look if you'd like to see photos of us.
Since then we have been lucky enough to visit the UK, Spain, South Africa, the USA, Mexico and Australia!
As you can see we travel a lot, and we have had housesitters looking after our own home and pets for long periods. So we know what it is like to leave your pets and belongings in the hands of strangers.