This is honestly the dumbest thing they could have done. Rover is a website for dogs, with people having already built business that we have to now compete for. Don't even get me started on how confusing it was to merge the profiles and to navigate Rover to update my information. I wish they could have just kept the website as is with the choice for sitters to work on Rover if they wish. I might just move to private sitting with my regular clients as this is looking out to be an absolute mess.

Hello,

I had a sitter that was booked for a week and he was meant to come twice a day (morning and night) as my cat is too social and gets lonely. He skipped one morning, lied about it (i have cameras and flagged this) and said he would come later in the morning as he wanted to come later in the morning "again" and in the evening. Anyway, in total the maximum amount of time spent was less than 20 mins, I mentioned it a couple of times and the week has now passed. I have proof of timestamps in videos and chats, am I allowed to get a partial refund? Thanks.

Hi, I am a cat owner and never had cameras in my property before with my previous cats. I’ve always had a Ring doorbell and now have a Tapo in my bedroom and another in the living room. They are not there to spy but I have them to observe my kittens from time to time. It was more for when one would pee on various things so it was set up to keep an eye when not home.

Now he is mostly okay we just keep it so I can check up on them when not wfh and see what they are doing and capture any funny things they do.

This is the first time we are going away and leaving them with a cat sitter since having them for the past 6 months. How do I bring it up with her so it doesn’t sound invasive and like spying? But just as a cat owner missing our kittens that we might watch some of the recordings. I don’t have any intention of spending my holiday live streaming the kittens! She is a university student so have said she is welcome to chill and study at ours in the day so want her to feel comfortable to do so!

Cat tax added of when they were tiny!

Edited to add: thanks all, she just came round to meet the kittens and was cool with the cameras. Just one of them is a proper scaredy cat so hoping he is ok! She said she will come round a few more times to see him before we actually go away in 2 weeks.

Im not an app developer myself but is there anyway someone could make an app like CAIF but with good updates etc so we can all just use that.

From the sound of the noise it appears a lot of people are unhappy and so the user base is clearly there.

Someone please do it i beg 😭

I’m in the UK, I have a good client base after doing cat sitting for 5 years. Cat in a Flat was simple, easy for the owners to use and great for people like me who only do cats.🐈‍⬛🐈

When it first happened my account was completely confused and lost all of the messages and reviews, I had to go through so much customer support and finally they sorted it out and I gave them the benefit of the doubt and said I’d keep using “Rover” to see how we got on.

Fast forward to now, the “Rover Cards” are useless, none of my clients seem to get them come through (luckily I send them updates on text as well) and the way it’s set up to choose a time confuses a lot of people booking after using CIAF, they don’t get why they have to do that now.

I just seem to be over explaining the way my business works while not really understanding the app myself.

Is anyone else in this same boat? I have other clients not on the app and it’s so much more smooth sailing with them.

Have a great Monday☀️😻

I just got this email from Rover after someone got in touch about a booking in August. She asked when she has to pay and I told her that Rover takes the payment at time of booking, so she said she’d have to wait until payday. I told her it was no problem, I’ll pencil her in, and she can re-request me when she’s ready to book. 30 minutes later Rover send me this pass-agg email.

It’s just ridiculous. Asking people to pay in full so far in advance is so unnecessary, and the only way I can think to manage it in a way that suits me (I don’t want to lose a booking) and the customer (who wants peace of mind that they’ve got their cat care covered) is to pencil it in and have them get in touch again (through Rover - we’ve no other way to contact each other) when they can afford to book.

This platform STINKS of greed, micromanaging, poor AI and zero people skills. It’s such a shame. I loved being a sitter on Cat in a Flat but since the merger it’s just problem after problem 😢

This is so sad. Cat in a flat was great and fair for sitters and cat owners. It is now unusable. 15 pounds per visit, ok, but 15 pounds per visit per cat? Plus a 15% fee on top? Forget about it. The new platform is also just bad.

I've been speaking with a journalist at a major UK newspaper who intends to run a story on the catastrophic CIAF / Rover merger and the impact this continues to have for cat sitters using the platform.

Please DM me if the following apply:

• you agree to go on record (this means full name and photograph)

• you agree to a phone interview with the journalist ASAP - tomorrow or Monday

• the demise of CIAF/the merger represents a significant loss of income or hardship for you

• you're happy for your age and location to be quoted (and tell me these). I feel like they are looking for a slightly younger face for the article (in the age of AI taking out junior levels of the workforce / rise of the gig economy).

Please DM me by 8am tomorrow morning, Friday, outlining your story. The article is planned to run next week. Please note I am not the journalist.

Rover have clearly handled this poorly and you have rights. Remember the Uber hooha?! Well the CMA doesn’t like the US gig economy model. Send them a detailed email of your experience. The key points you need to make are - how much information you were given prior to the merger, how clear the changes to pricing were, how significant the pricing changes have been, how they take the money from the customer at point of sale and you are not paid until after the visit. How you lost your reviews and reputation, how you can’t find previous loyal customers. How many bookings you are losing. Be clear about your previous experience and what it looks like now. How your customers are being mislead about how pricing works (we do not get told that you don’t receive the whole fee). Be sure to add all additional fees imposed.

It may not be strictly illegal but fairness and transparency is taken seriously. Many US companies have failed in the UK for this exact behaviour. Significant economic reduction is a key issue.

If enough of you email, they will take notice. I myself will be writing a detailed complaint from the consumer perspective as well. I’m so sorry this happened to you.

[email protected]

It's behind a paywall so here's a non-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/y45WU

I’ve been booked to look after a lady’s cat over Christmas, she initially booked 1 visit a day but asked for 2 visits so I asked her to amend the booking and then I’d accept. she did amend quickly and so I accepted, asking her availability for a handover. She’s now gone silent, I’ve messaged her 4 times but she’s not read any of the messages. I don’t know what to do, I’m worried that the cat will be left alone for 5 days but surely she can’t expect it to be looked after if I don’t even have a key? It’s now too late to cancel but Ive contacted admin to explain. Has anyone else dealt with a similar situation, and what was the outcome? I’m not sure the repercussions if a sitter cancels last minute. TIA

ASAP its a money grab, unfriendly robotic plarform.

I'm so sad. I've been on CIAF for over a year before getting my first booking. Since then I've had 2 bookings this year and I was finally getting somewhere. Building up some clients. Now this merge to Rover and no notice board has really screwed me over. I don't think I'll get any bookings. I was offering 1 visit a day for £10 and 2 visits a day for £15. Now I can't include a discount for 2 visits. I got 2 of my clients through the notice board. I finally felt like I was going to make some extra money and it's been taken away. Also tried to remove the charge for additional cat and it won't let me edit it. Any ideas how to do this?

Hi everyone, given the upcomg awful changes with the Rover merge, does anyone know other platforms that I could join?

Main things that I like about CIAF are being able to get an owners address and meet them before the booking is finalised; pricing being fully in my control (no limit on it); the relatively small percentage taken; the low additional charge owners get for booking; adding pictures of cats I've looked after; reviews easily accessible; availability calendar; it doesn't stop me from sharing my number; the 1 visit/2 visit/overnight options; the overnights being clear that they are in the owners home. The payout policy in particular is essential for me, I've had enough sits that I now get paid a few days after the sit starts, Rovers policy might completely ruin my ability to do longer sits especially overnight ones.

Generally everything about it was great to me and now I'm losing my platform and am devastated about it.

I'm so disappointed in the upcoming changes. Cat in a Flat was the best platform I could find several years ago when I started. I saw so many bad things about Rover, and it just wasn't very popular in the UK from what I could tell, and definitely not a popular platform for cat owners since it's so heavily branded as a dog care platform - in my opinion.

I've tried holidog and don't like how that works, it has an upper limit for pricing, I think it doesn't adjust for how many times a day your there, and you can't share locations before a booking is made. You can't share a phone number or even suggest that you exist outside of holidog.

Sorry for the long post, had to rant a little bit, but also wanted to explain kind of what I'm looking for in a platform. So, does anyone know any where?

Or maybe someone here is/knows someone who is developing a new community??

Thank you for the help

Did the merger and the full app is a joke. Ive been a sitter on cat in a flat for 5 years and mainly did it because i loved looking after as many cats as i could. I still charged a competitive fee but didnt care if the person had 1 or 5 cats as it was all the same.

On rover however, people are charging for an additional cat fee which is crazy to me. You dont di anything extra? I just feel this rover app only cares about the money and people doing it for the sheer love of cats has been lost on that app.

Personally i dont think i’ll be using it for my own pet sitting needs as think its so greedy to charge to look after an additional cat when you dont see them anyway 😭

Hi all,

Has anyone else received this card recently? It looks like they have started noticing the lack of bookings and the impact the merger has had.

To put into perspective why I've probably had this, August 2025 I had 13 active bookings on the platform whereas August 2026 I had 2 active bookings on the platform (but 20 independent bookings not on CAIF using social media to advertise / existing clients who have gone off platform as well).

Card contents:

Dear

I noticed your bookings have dropped off since the move to Rover, and I wanted to reach out personally rather than let that go unnoticed. Sitters like you are a big part ot why so many cat owners trust Cat in a Flat.

We know the move from Cat in a Flat to Rover wasn't something everyone asked for and the transition hasn't been seamless for everyone. Whether it's your account, the new interface, or something else entirely, we'd like to help.

You've been part of our community, and that means a lot to us.

We`ve set up a dedicated inbox for Cat in a Flat customers at [email protected]. If you're experiencing any issues or simply want to get in touch, just drop us a message.

With love from,

Team Cat in a Flat at Rover

So I just got my first request via Rover since the merger. I did the meet and greet, said to the customer I would send them my phone number so they could text me if the site goes down or whatever. I used to do this all the time on CIAF because it's just more secure having a second method of communicating.

I tried to send this and got a message pop up saying I couldn't send a message with a phone number because that's not secure and all messages up to booking have to be via Rover.

Not even an hour later I got this email reminding me if I take business off rover I will lose my account. I'm sorry what 😂 please don't threaten me with a good time hahaha

Does anyone else find the messages from Rover passive aggressive? I believe they use some AI system to detect key words which then sends you an email as sometimes I’ll be messaging a client and get an email warning me to not take the booking off the app, which I don’t even do. I also just confirmed a booking and an automatic message popped up telling me to not bring other dogs into their house (i’m a catsitter anyway 🙄), reminding me that people have cameras so can see what time I arrive and leave and to leave their house in a better state than I found it. Which is so patronising, I have good reviews can’t they trust I know these basic things. But as I don’t remember this message coming up when confirming a booking before, makes me paranoid that maybe the client complained about her last booking with me.

I’m not looking after a dog. This customer doesn’t even have a dog. Come on guys, you’ve had long enough to sort these things out.

I got a new client request on CIAF, using the Rover app I tried to use the "Propose Meet & Greet" feature. You (as the sitter) have to enter a date, time and a MANDATORY location for the Meet & Greet. Rover already know the the pet owner's address but they won't share with you until the booking is made. This is another example of a dog process NOT working for cats. For a dog, I understand you might meet in a park but I can't think of many cat owners that are going to do that.

Caution: this is an extremely frustrated rant.

If you don't care for that just have a look at the silly cat pictures and have a good night ✨

I didn't think I could get any more frustrated with this stupid merge from hell, but they still manage to surprise me after all these months!

For context: I live in germany and have been on CIAF for about five years. I have always been frustrated with the CIAF-App since my inbox glitched a lot! Messages didn't get send at all, others went out twice, no notifications for new messages. Then the Rover nation attacked.

The whole two-accounts-thing is so incredibly dumb, especially since we as sitters can't really use the CIAF-App anymore, even though our old messages were supposed to be accessible there! And the Rover app actually manages to be an even bigger mess than CIAF! You have 12.000 boxes to check, but all but three of them are dog-exclusive. And the ui is the worst thing I have experienced since 1999 edu pc games.

Customers have told me that their accounts were transfered to Rover... And suddenly - according to Rover - they had a dachshund instead of a cat! And that dog even had a completely new name! Where did that data come from? Is anyone missing Orlov the dachshund? We'd like to trade him for Kola the cat.

The whole pricing scheme is beyond rediculous! At first I was kinda happy because Rover "only" takes a 15% fine instead of CIAFs 19%. And then you try to put your prices in and nothing makes sense. Why would I charge extra for additional cats?! Easy: because Rover thinks that a "cat" is a breed of dog. Everything is a dog! I'm surprised the "can take care of reptiles" - option didn't somehow create the option to walk "scaly dogs".

Now. I have put my Account on inactive. I have two remaining bookings on this hellsite until I can ditch it completely. But those two...

Of course one is with the dachshund-lady. We sat down and tried to conquer the new booking system together. She clicked things, I clicked things. And suddenly - even though the bookings was still three months off at that point - she was charged the entire ammount immediately. About 350€ gone three months in advance! You can't do that! That's half my rent! You can't just take that and sit on it for months! What if something change or someone cancels? That's nuts!

Since that whole debacle about two months ago the app has done other "funny" things, some of which are:

- told me they deactivated my account for not filling out my profile and by that somehow REACTIVATED my inactive account (twice)

- activated different varieties of dog-related sitting services on my profile by itself (at least three times)

- sent emails to my customers claiming I have deleted my account (I wish, but no, not yet)

I am currently unsure if my account is frozen or inactive or active or how many dogs I am allegedly offering to walk. I hope someone documents this merge and uses it as an example on how to successfully run a working business into the ground.

Okay, rant over. Now you can look at the derpy kitties and be on your way, friend ✨

Sharing my experience on Rover so far as i’m interested if other people are having the same thing, or have any insights into it.

Firstly when it was still CatinaFlat I mainly just did repeat bookings with regulars and occasionally had requests from new owners. When I’d get new requests they’d send a pretty lengthy message about their cats and what they’d want doing, and always understood the price, never asked me questions about it. Most of the time a new request would lead to a booking.

Since the merger I have been getting more requests from new owners however they don’t seem to go anywhere. Normally one or two messages and then silence. They also tend to be really short messages, asking if i’m available on those dates and not sharing anything about their cats or their needs. I’ve also had a few asking about the price, which I don’t understand when they should see what the price is on the app. I feel like I might be wasting my time on this app, trying to reply to people quickly so it doesn’t affect my insights but then getting no replies from the owners. I’m also unsure how long to wait to archive the request when I haven’t heard back from them.

After a period of just nothing about the merge on their socials they had finally posted a rather dismissive and useless update. Judging by the comments the general consensus is still against the merge

I'm winding down my cat sitting business now (I now have a full time job and work 9-7:30 and I just couldn't physically do cat sitting anymore without burning myself into the ground so I've had to stop very sadly 😔😔 I did 30 minute visits and getting to and from houses, it was taking me over an hour basically per visit so I'd get home, eat and sleep, repeat 😔) but I'm still noticing Rover is so dog oriented, it's so frustrating! Like why do Rover cards need locations?! And why does it say walk when I'm looking after a cat??? 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 The lack of cat inclusivity is irritating... The only thing I'm not sad to leave behind.