“Fed and happy” tells you nothing

A visit note should tell you something you’d only know if you’d been in the room. Not “all good!” but “ate about half the usual portion, seemed more interested in the window than usual, the space was already tidy when I arrived.” The second version tells you whether today was ordinary.

The four things every note includes

Appetite compared to normal, bathroom habits, energy and hiding behavior, and anything physically different — a limp, a new scab, unusual grooming. None of these require special training to notice. They just require actually looking, every visit, in the same order, so a change stands out instead of blending in.

We send a note after every single visit, even the uneventful ones. Especially the uneventful ones — that’s the baseline you’ll want on the one visit that isn’t.