Care Guides

On the first morning of our kitchen job I found the cat on top of the fridge, which had itself been shoved into the hallway, ears flat and pupils like dinner plates, watching two men carry a worktop past her at head height. She had not eaten. She had not used the tray. She stayed up there most of the day, and it dawned on me that I had planned the entire job around cabinet handles and quotes and had given roughly no thought to the animals living in the middle of it.

Building work is harder on pets than people expect, because the things that bother them are not the things that bother us. We see progress and a finish date. They see their territory dismantled by strangers.

Start with dust. Cutting tiles, chasing walls, sanding floors and working MDF or fibre cement throws fine particles that hang in the air long after the tools go quiet. Cats and dogs live at floor level where it all settles, and cats then groom it out of their coats and swallow it. Birds are in another category altogether. A bird's respiratory system is extraordinarily efficient and correspondingly fragile, and fumes or dust that only make you cough can kill a parrot or a budgie. If you keep birds, they need to leave the house for the duration of any dusty or fume-heavy stage, not just move to a back bedroom. The same goes for rabbits and guinea pigs, stuck at floor height in a cage they cannot leave.

Fumes come from solvent-based paint, varnish, wood stain, contact adhesive, expanding foam, sealants and floor lacquer. Ventilate hard, choose water-based products where you have the option, and keep animals out of a room until surfaces are cured rather than merely dry to the touch — floor lacquer in particular keeps releasing solvent for days after it stops feeling tacky.

Then the risk that actually loses pets: the open door. Front doors are propped for hours, side gates are left ajar for deliveries, sections of fence come down for access, and the man carrying a sheet of plasterboard cannot see a cat at ankle height. Tell every trade on day one, out loud, that there is an animal in the house. Put a sign on the safe room door reading DO NOT OPEN, CAT INSIDE, and another on the front door. Assume a quiet word with the boss never reaches the delivery driver. Check your microchip details are current while you are at it; it takes five minutes.

Noise is the next problem. Nail guns, SDS drills and angle grinders are unpredictable, loud and close, and a dog with any existing noise sensitivity can pick up a lasting fear from a fortnight of bangs. Cats mostly hide and stop eating, and a cat that eats nothing for two or three days is at genuine risk of hepatic lipidosis, a liver condition that turns a stress reaction into a medical emergency. So watch the bowl and watch the tray, not just the mood. If a cat has eaten nothing for a full day and is hiding, ring the vet rather than waiting it out.

Pick one room the trades will never need — furthest from the work, with a door that actually latches — and make it the safe room. Everything goes in: bed, water, food, litter tray at the opposite end from the food, a covered box or carrier to hide in, the scratching post, and a radio or white noise at normal conversational volume to blur the bangs rather than add to them. Roll a towel along the bottom of the door to keep dust out. Go in at breaks, sit on the floor, be boring, and let them come to you.

Keep the rest of life identical. Same feeding times, same walks, same bedtime. Dogs tolerate an upended house far better when the day still has its familiar landmarks. Get the dog out during the loudest hours — the noisiest job on the schedule is a good reason for a long walk, an afternoon with a walker or a morning at a friend's.

A few materials deserve specific mention. Expanding foam is the worst of them: a dog that chews a cured lump or licks the wet product can end up with a mass that swells inside the stomach and needs surgery to remove. Polyurethane wood glue behaves the same way. Cement and grout are strongly alkaline and burn skin and pads, so wash it off immediately. Loose fibreglass insulation is an irritant that some dogs will cheerfully eat. Then there are the dull hazards that generate most of the vet bills anyway — screws, nails and staples on the floor, offcuts of cable, cable ties, open paint tins, a blade left on a step. Ask for a real sweep at the end of each day with tins and sharps stored up high, then do your own walk round before you open the safe room door.

Some jobs simply are not survivable at home. Full rewiring, floor sanding, roof work, anything that means doors stand open all day or the noise runs for weeks. If you have a bird, a nervous cat or a dog who cannot settle, boarding them or parking them with a familiar friend is the kinder answer and not an admission of failure. Book early, check the vaccination requirements, and send their own bedding and food so the only thing that changes is the address.

When it is finished they come back to a house that smells like somebody else's. Let them explore in their own time instead of carrying them round for the tour. Put the bed, the tray and the scratching post back before the furniture, and resist washing every soft item at once — familiar smell is doing useful work. Cats will re-scent the new rooms by rubbing every corner, and that is the process rather than a nuisance. Give it a week. Most of them settle sooner than you do.