Sitting Out the Summer

Another California summer watching dogs, cats and llamas, oh my! We seem to have unintentially settled in to a lifestyle of petsitting for family, friends and fellow TrustedHousesitters (see links at the end)*.

Big dogs, little dogs, furry cats and wooly llamas: French Bulldogs (3), Pug, miniature Australian Shepard, Vizsla, King Charles Spaniel, English Spaniel, Portuguese Water Dog, Akbash+Husky mix, Doodles, little terrier mix, and some other kind of mix. Gray cats (2), tabby cats (2), black and white, orange cat, and calico, and various shades of llama.

Boy dogs named Lewis, Rudy, Smokey, Zorro, Henry and Mallard. And the girls; Rio, Olive, Penny, Daisy, Dulce, Abbie, Ellie and Mei Mei. Clementine was obviously the orange cat, Lady Grey obviously grey as was Alice, Reggie a tabby, Sophie was black and white, Tuna the calico, Bella was just bella (see above). And the llamas-Pearl, Freda, Mac and Phil.

We did a lot of walking with our local guides

But we also sat

We enjoyed our stays in many of the historic Northern California hippie towns

Point Richmond just across from San Francisco, was pretty odd. Nested between industrial East Bay, and the Chevron Oil pier, with a very funny little downtown….

Highlight was the dog sit in San Rafael, a block away from the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Marin Community Center just off the 101. We have driven past hundreds of time, never visited. Now we have, it was worth it. Go see it next time you are just north of San Francisco on the 101.

After enjoying the cool summer of Northern California we dipped down to LA and San Diego, reminding us of how very different San Diego is from LA and both very different from Northern California.

And unfortunately another summer of protests

Sebastopol, Fort Bragg, Santa Rosa and La Jolla. Big turnouts in small towns.

Pets and protests improved our spirits, but by Thanksgiving we were starving for sanity which is in limited supply in the States. So, we went back to Europe on December 1st.

*Our other very pet-centric stories (since we do this much of the time, most include pets) https://chosenfugue.xyz/2023/03/12/the-dog-days-of-summer/ , https://chosenfugue.xyz/2023/03/12/sitting-part-1-location-location-location/ , https://chosenfugue.xyz/2023/03/12/sitting-part-2-animals-animals-animals/, https://chosenfugue.xyz/2025/11/14/montpellier-cat-a-blog/

Trusted Housesitters- how we sit https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/refer/RAF531870/?utm_source=web-native-share&utm_medium=refer-a-friend&utm_campaign=refer-a-friend