u/Fickle_Thing_5015

I'm a cat only sitter, my calendar was completely full all of April and first week of May and now crickets. I've had a couple of requests but 1) one found another sitter in the 4 minutes it took me to answer at 11pm 2) several have been vastly outside of my booking area 3) finally I got one I thought would be good, meet and greet set, but their trip got canceled.

I feel defeated. Usually one of my regulars would've booked with me but three of them are moving away this month (2 are college students graduating) and the others haven't needed me recently. I knew it would be difficult being a cat only sitter, but I feel like the competition is so tough right now.

I was previously listed at a lower price and had to raise it recently due to gas prices but I'm still not charging more than the average sitter around where I am. I'm scared the only way I'll get clients again is if I lower my prices again but everything is so expensive right now and I thought I had enough glowing reviews + star sitter and would be able to charge a smidge more.

Last time I modded Skyrim was in 2021. Now with AE I'm a little nervous that things have changed in ways I may not know. I've been going through my old mod list and reading the posts on all of them to see what's been having issues, I've already decided on switching a few things out, like AddItemMenu, since people are saying it's broken now. It also seems like lots of people have moved away from FNIS. I'm gonna be honest, I don't really understand what changed with AE and how big of a deal it was, but if anyone has any advice for me I'd appreciate it tons.

I had a client who was looking for a new regular cat sitter after his last one moved away, I've done one sit for him and I just cannot go back. He had so many extra needs each visit that he would add on like dealing with technical issues with his camera, technical issues with the auto water fountain, issues with the robot litter. The cat wasn't eating one of the foods and he had me leave the old food out and wouldn't let me toss it so it got foul and I ended up tossing it anyway. He has some new strat cats he rescued that he keeps separated from the other cat in his basement and there's a fly issue in there and same thing with the food TONS of wet food, way more than the cats could eat, I said the I don't think this is a good idea and he insisted they needed that much food, and overnight it got MAGGOTS IN IT (fun fact maggots can hatch in 8 hours bleh). I had to stay late cleaning up the maggots, I almost threw up several times.

He also didn't even tip me which is fine bc a tip is always a nice surprise but you think if someone had to spend an extra half hour cleaning maggots out of your apartment you'd maybe tip or at least leave a review. Nor did he apologize that I had to deal with that. Since then he tried to book me for a last minute trip that I was unavailable for and when I said I was unavaliable he replied that my rover said I was available! I had to explain that when a payment hasn't gone through it doesn't remove the spot yet. and now he wants to book me again for a few weeks out from now and I don't know how to say I can't ever come back bc even tho this has been hell he was a very sweet guy and I am stressed.

I'm a cat sitter and had to raise my prices for new clients by 2 dollars due to rapid gas price increasing, putting me still on the medium to low end of sitters in my area, and I haven't gotten a single new client since then, until tonight. I was so excited to hear my rover ring tone go off and then before I could even respond the client replied saying that they accidentally sent it and didn't mean to contact me. That's frustrating but fine until I realize that archiving this request pushes me out of the acceptance rate of star sitter. I hate that something that's 100% unavoidable on my end can punish me so intensely.

Every time I've not accepted a request it has been because of an owner mistake. Why isn't there a way for them to cancel it on their end without penalizing us? I can't imagine I'm gonna have any better luck getting new clients without star sitter status. It's even more frustrating with them pushing clients from out of my radius into my requests, even though that doesn't penalize us it still tricks me into thinking I could have a new client and then letting me down.

This title sounds so silly but I'm just wondering if anyone has any recommendations for female followers for SE that are not entirely geared towards the male gaze. No judgement to those mods they're just not very enjoyable for me as a woman. Like I really wanted to like Sofia but all the jokes she was making seemed to imply I was a man unfortunately haha. I really liked Auri for reference. There doesn't have to be romance but if there is that's cool.

Edit: I wasn't expecting this to get so many responses! Thank you so much for everyone who responded, I've added so many incredible new mods to my list and I'm so excited to try them out :) this community always comes through in the best way.