Terms of Service

1. What we provide

BaskingPaws provides in-home drop-in visits for cats. A standard visit is 30 minutes and includes fresh food and water, litter scooped and refreshed, medication administered per your written instructions, play or quiet companionship, light home touches (mail and packages brought in, lights rotated, plants watered on request), and a photo, short video and written update sent to you afterward.

We care for cats only. We do not board animals, transport animals, provide overnight stays, or provide veterinary or grooming services. We are not veterinarians and nothing we tell you is veterinary advice.

2. Service area

We serve Basking Ridge, Warren, Bernardsville, Gillette and Bedminster, New Jersey. We may accept clients just outside this area at our discretion. Service is subject to availability — we deliberately limit how many clients we take so that visits stay unhurried and the same sitter can attend every visit.

3. Meet & Greet and care plan

New clients start with a free in-home Meet & Greet. It carries no cost and no obligation to book. We use it to meet your cat, understand the routine, and confirm we're a good fit. We may decline to take on a client after a Meet & Greet — for example if a cat's needs are beyond what drop-in visits can safely provide.

After the Meet & Greet we prepare a written care plan covering feeding, medication, litter, access, veterinary details and emergency contacts. You are responsible for reviewing and approving the care plan and for telling us promptly whenever anything in it changes. We follow the approved plan; we can't act on information we were never given.

4. Booking & cancellation

Bookings are confirmed once we've agreed the dates and visit schedule with you in writing. Dates are not held until confirmed. Holiday periods and school breaks fill early and we recommend booking well in advance.

How that applies in the situations that actually come up:

• Cancelling part of a booking. The same 48-hour rule applies to whichever visits you're dropping, measured against the first visit you're cancelling.
• Coming home early. Tell us as soon as you know. Visits more than 48 hours out are refunded in full; anything sooner is subject to the single $10 fee.
• Visits paid from a package. Cancelled visits go back into your package balance rather than being refunded to your card, so you don't lose them. The $10 fee still applies inside 48 hours.
• Rescheduling instead of cancelling. Moving a visit to a different date, where we have availability, is free at any notice. We'd rather move it than lose it.
• Extending a trip. Just ask. Added visits are billed at your usual rate, subject to availability.
• We can't get in. If we arrive and can't access the home for a reason outside our control, the visit is treated as performed and charged — see section 7.
• Holiday and extra-cat surcharges. These follow the same 48-hour rule as the visits they were charged for: cancel with 48 hours or more notice and the surcharge is refunded in full along with the visits. If you chose to pay a surcharge with package visits instead of cash, those visits go back into your balance when the whole booking is cancelled.

Refunds are issued to the original payment method and normally land within 5–10 business days, depending on your bank.

If we ever have to cancel — illness, weather, an emergency — we'll tell you as early as we can, help arrange an alternative where possible, and refund any visits we don't perform.

5. Pricing & payment

Current rates are $34 per 30-minute visit, $31 per visit on a 10-visit package ($310), and $28 per visit on a 25-visit package ($700). One or two cats are the same price; a third cat and beyond adds $5 per visit each. New clients may start with the “Try Me” Package — a free Meet & Greet plus three visits for $75 — available once per household.

Holiday rate

Visits on the following days carry a surcharge of $7 per visit, on top of the rate above:

• New Year’s — December 31 and January 1
• Memorial Day — the Saturday, Sunday and Monday
• July 4th — the holiday weekend
• Labor Day — the Saturday, Sunday and Monday
• Thanksgiving — Thursday through Sunday
• Christmas — December 23 through December 27

The booking page names which of your chosen dates are affected, and what the surcharge comes to, before you book. It is charged to your card at the time of booking, separately from any package purchase. If you have spare visits left on a package, you can choose to spend those against the surcharge instead of paying it — the booking page shows how many, and never more than covers the amount owed.

The extra-cat surcharge is charged the same way, at booking, for every visit in the stay.

Packages

Packages are paid upfront and drawn down one visit at a time. Package visits stay valid for 24 months from the date of purchase and expire after that. We'll remind you by email before any visits are due to expire. Packages are non-transferable between households and are refundable only for unused visits, less any fees already owed.

Rates may change, but never for a booking already confirmed, and never for package visits you've already bought. Any holiday surcharge or additional fee will be disclosed to you before you book — not applied afterward.

Card on file

If you save a card to your account, you authorize us to charge that card for visits you book and for any amounts owed under the cancellation policy above. Card details are stored by our PCI-compliant payment processor, not by us. You can remove a saved card at any time from your account. If a charge fails, we'll contact you and service may be paused until payment is resolved.

6. Unconditional Satisfaction Guarantee

If you're unhappy with the care for any reason, tell us within 72 hours of the first visit of that booking and we will refund the entire booking. No forms, no debate, no explanation required.

The guarantee covers what you paid us for cat sitting. It isn't a general indemnity — it doesn't cover veterinary bills, property damage or other losses, which are addressed in section 12. We may decline to continue serving a household after a full refund, at our discretion.

7. Home access & keys

You are responsible for providing reliable access — a working key, lockbox, code, fob or building arrangement — and for telling us about alarms, cameras, gates or front-desk procedures before the first visit. We recommend a lockbox over a physical key handoff.

Access details are kept confidential and restricted to your assigned sitter. If we cannot get in and the reason is outside our control — a code that doesn't work, a lock that's been changed, a building that won't admit us — we will contact you immediately, but the visit is treated as performed and charged, because we made the trip.

If someone else will be in the home during our visits (a cleaner, a contractor, a friend, a family member), tell us in advance. Unexpected people in the home create risk for your cat and for us.

8. Veterinary emergencies

If your cat appears seriously ill or injured, we will make reasonable efforts to reach you and your emergency contact. If we can't reach you in time and the situation appears urgent, you authorize us to seek veterinary care from your listed veterinarian or, if unavailable, the nearest emergency clinic.

You are responsible for all veterinary costs, including transport and emergency fees, regardless of outcome. We'll keep you informed throughout and provide all documentation.

9. Your responsibilities

• Give us accurate, complete and current information about your cat's health, medication, temperament and history — including any history of biting, scratching or escape attempts.
• Keep your cat's vaccinations current, including rabies as required by New Jersey law.
• Leave enough food, litter, medication and supplies for the full booking, plus a margin in case you're delayed.
• Make sure the home is safe to enter and work in, and disclose any hazards.
• Tell us promptly if your travel dates change or you return early.
• Keep your contact details and emergency contact current.

If a cat presents a genuine danger to the sitter, we may end the visit and the booking. We'll always secure the cat's immediate welfare and contact you first.

10. Your account

You're responsible for keeping your login credentials confidential and for activity that happens under your account. Tell us right away if you think someone else has access to it. Provide accurate information when you register, and keep it up to date. We may suspend or close an account that's being misused, that contains false information, or where amounts owed remain unpaid.

11. Communications consent

When you submit a form or create an account, you agree that we may contact you about your request, your bookings and your cat's care by phone, text and email — this is part of providing the service.

You also agree to receive marketing and promotional email from us. Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link, you can unsubscribe here at any time, and unsubscribing never affects your service or your pricing.

Promotional text messages are separate and optional. We send them only if you check the specific box for them, that box is never pre-checked, and declining it is not a condition of booking. Message and data rates may apply and frequency varies. Reply STOP to opt out or HELP for help. See our Privacy Policy for details.

12. Liability

We take real care in your home and with your cat, and we'll own our mistakes. We are responsible for loss or damage caused by our own negligence during a visit.

We are not responsible for:

• Illness, injury or death arising from a pre-existing condition, age, or a condition not disclosed to us.
• Harm caused by another animal in the home, or by a cat escaping through a door, window or screen that was already unsecured.
• Damage your cat causes to your own home while we're not present.
• Loss or damage caused by anyone else with access to the home during the booking period.
• Failures of appliances, plumbing, heating, alarm systems or utilities.
• Events outside our reasonable control, including severe weather, road closures and emergencies.

To the fullest extent permitted by New Jersey law, our total liability arising out of or relating to the services is limited to the amount you paid us for the booking in question.

13. Ending service

Either of us can end the relationship at any time. If we end it while you have visits booked, we'll complete those visits where we safely can, or refund them. Sections that by their nature should survive — payment owed, liability, governing law — continue to apply afterward.

14. Governing law & changes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, and any dispute will be handled in the state or federal courts located in Somerset County, New Jersey. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.

We may update these terms. The version in effect when you book is the version that governs that booking. Material changes will be posted here with an updated date, and for significant changes we'll notify active clients by email.

Questions? Email RoseliesPetCare@gmail.com.