Rabbit and small pet sitting in Paris

Rabbit sitting in Paris, the way we do it, means the animal does not move at all: it stays in its pen, in its room, with its own smells, its own hay and the same street noise, while someone comes to sleep in the flat. We are Leisan and Vincent, a remote-working couple who look after animals in their owners' homes and sleep there every booked night. We have already cared for rabbits, hens, axolotls, frogs and three sugar gliders. Search for rabbit boarding in Paris and the first page of Google offers you almost nothing but boarding facilities and daycare, which is the one arrangement that requires putting the animal in a carrier, crossing the city and setting it down somewhere it has never been. One rabbit alone costs €28 per night from 8 nights, before discounts: a €25 stay base and €3 supplement.

Why moving a rabbit is the real risk

Look at what the search results actually offer. Boarding kennels, daycare, facilities that take animals in. They all share one thing: they start with a journey. For a dog that gets in the car every weekend, that journey costs very little. For a rabbit or a small pet, it is a different matter.

A rabbit reads its world through smell, sound and habit. The same corner of the room, the same tray, the same hay, the same moment when the fridge door opens. Moving house breaks all three at once: new smells, new noises, a new rhythm, and often other animals within earshot. Add the journey itself, the carrier, the heat or cold in transit, and the wait on arrival.

We will not tell you what any of that does inside a rabbit's body. We are not vets and it is not our job. What we can say is that staying at home removes the whole factor in one go, and asks nothing of the animal. There is no journey that has to go well, no adjustment to get right, no new environment to accept. The only thing that changes is us.

And we are the ones who adapt. That is a great deal easier than asking a rabbit to do it.

Our usual arrangement is overnight care. We sleep in the home every night of the booking and we work remotely from the flat, so we are there for most of the day as well. For an animal whose habitat needs regular checking, that matters. If you are still weighing up the options, the comparison of in-home care, drop-ins and boarding and the overview of pet care options in Paris set them out side by side.

What a small pet needs day to day

"Small pets" lumps together animals that have almost nothing in common: rabbits, ferrets, rodents, birds, reptiles, amphibians, hens, marsupials. What they share is not a species, it is the amount of information we need before we start.

Here is what we have actually done, on real bookings.

For hens: opening and closing the coop at the times the household gave us, topping up water, collecting eggs, checking everyone had gone in for the night. Nothing complicated, but nothing to improvise either. The owner tells us when, and in what order.

For axolotls and frogs: the daily routine is about water and equipment. We follow exactly what was written down for us, with the household's own equipment, at the household's own rhythm. We never change a setting on our own initiative.

For the three sugar gliders: they lived at night. We mostly saw them in the late afternoon and the evening. Sleeping in the home makes obvious sense for an animal like that, because most of its activity falls at an hour when a thirty-minute visit would already have left.

For rabbits: hay, water, tray, the space they come out into, and a lot of watching.

Measured in minutes, a small pet's day is often short. Measured in precision, it is demanding. The variable is not effort, it is information. A rabbit does not come and explain that something has changed, and we do not rely on it to. We rely on what you have written down. That is exactly what the instruction sheet is for.

The normality sheet we ask for

We always ask for a written guide before owners leave. For a small pet we ask for something more precise, which between ourselves we call the normality sheet.

The idea is simple. We can spot a change, provided we know what we are comparing it against. Nobody knows your animal's normal except you. We are not going to work it out from an article, a forum or a booking we did for someone else. So we ask you to write it down.

What we ask you for	What we do with it
Food: exactly what, how much using the household's own measure, at what time, where it is kept	We repeat your gesture identically, without converting or rounding
Extras: what you give on top, how often, and what is off limits in your home	We give nothing that is not on the sheet
Water: which container, where, how often it is changed, with what water	We keep to your rhythm and note what has been drunk
Droppings: where, how often, what they usually look like, what strikes you as out of the ordinary	We compare with your description, without interpreting it
Habitat: the temperature and humidity range you aim for, where the reading is taken, what to do if it falls outside	We take the reading, photograph it and apply your instruction
Rhythm: waking hours, resting hours, time out of the pen, how long, in which room	We shape the day around the animal, not around us
Behaviour: hiding places, reaction to a stranger, what it dislikes, how it is handled or whether it is handled at all	We respect your limits rather than trying to build a bond
Call thresholds: your written list, from "let me know" to "ring the vet straight away"	We apply your thresholds, not our judgement
Contacts: your vet, the one who knows the animal, and where its papers are	We ring the practice you have named
Supplies: where the stock is, how much is left, what to buy and where, what we must not replace ourselves	We warn you before anything runs out

We do not ask for all this to cover ourselves. We ask because we cannot guess it, and because a small pet booking that starts with guesswork starts badly.

We then go through the sheet together, in person. We always arrange a meeting, face to face or by video call, before either side commits, and keys are handed over in person or by whatever protocol we agree. During that meet and greet we ask you to walk us through a full day, and we repeat it back to check we have understood the same thing you meant.

Habitat, temperature and cleaning

We set no values. No temperature, no humidity level, no portion size. You set them, we read them.

What we ask you to show us physically, during the meeting: where the thermometer or hygrometer is read, what a normal display looks like to you, what to do if it falls outside your range, and who to ring if it does. We take the reading, note it, and the photo of the display goes out with the day's pictures.

Cleaning works the same way. You tell us how often, with which product, what must never be used in your home, what gets washed and what gets replaced, and where it goes. Technical equipment, filtration, heating, lighting, timers: we do not touch it unless you have shown us and written it down.

One thing small pet owners raise constantly is the failure case. A power cut, a heatwave, a device that stops. Sleeping in the home changes the picture, because a problem that appears at eleven at night is not left unanswered until the next morning. What we then do, though, is whatever you wrote on the sheet: who to call, which fallback, which limit.

We generally send photos every day on WhatsApp, at whatever pace suits you. For a small pet we are happy to include the clean habitat and the readings on the devices, because that is what you want to see from the airport. We would rather there were no camera in the home; if there is one, we need to know where it is. The rest of the logistics is covered in the guide to preparing your Paris flat.

What we do not accept

We are not vets. We observe, we tell you immediately, you decide. That sentence is not a stylistic precaution, it is the exact boundary of what we do.

We have given eye drops and oral treatments, applied balm, fitted cones, and followed meals, water and litter closely. Across more than fifty bookings, three needed a trip to the vet: a dog with a hot spot, a cat that had stopped using the litter tray, and a follow-up appointment after an operation that predated the booking.

What we will not do:

• a care procedure we have not been trained in, even if it is explained by message the night before you leave;
• handling that an animal only accepts from you;
• a technical adjustment to a habitat whose workings we do not understand;
• a protocol we discover at the last minute, with no live demonstration.

And we turn a booking down when the conversation beforehand shows we cannot meet the animal's needs. It happens. That is what the meeting is for: so either side can say no before committing. An owner who cannot produce a normality sheet, a habitat that needs technical skill we do not have, an animal that needs a daily procedure we cannot perform: in all three cases we would rather tell you straight away than discover the problem on day three.

Our other limits are worth stating too. There are two of us, not an agency, so our diary is small. Our arrangement centres on overnight stays; drop-ins, walks and daytime care are considered case by case. We do not smoke and we do not drink alcohol. If a booking is cancelled, we ask for at least one month's notice before the start date. We cover Paris, the inner suburbs, and further afield depending on the case.

For the rest, the Paris region has 24-hour emergency services such as Centre Hospitalier Vétérinaire Frégis, VetinParis, Vétérinaires 2 Toute Urgence and VetoAdom, which comes to the home. Choosing the practice is yours to do, and it is done before you leave: that is the point of the veterinary emergency plan. If you are comparing several sitters, the useful criteria are gathered in the guide to choosing a pet sitter.

What small pet sitting costs

We charge per night, exactly as the calculator on the homepage does.

Item	Standard nightly rate, for stays from 8 nights
Stay base, including the first cat if present	€25
Each cat from the second onward	+€5
Each small dog under 10 kg	+€10
Each dog of 10 kg or more	+€15
Each rabbit, ferret, bird or other small animal	+€3
Each large animal	+€15
Each animal on a special treatment	+€5

Special offer: care for the first cat is €0 instead of €25 per night from 8 nights. From 15 nights, care for the first two cats is €0 instead of €30 per night. The offer removes the €25 base and, from 15 nights with at least two cats, the €5 second-cat supplement. Without a cat, the stay base remains chargeable. Other supplements are still payable. The simulator applies the rate for your chosen duration.

Stays of 1–7 nights are always paid, with a €50 minimum per stay. Special offer: one cat free from 8 nights, up to two cats free from 15 nights, for stays of up to 180 nights. Additional cats, other animals and special treatments remain chargeable. A 15% discount applies from 30 nights, replaced by 20% from 91 nights. Over 180 nights, contacting us for a personalised quote is mandatory.

Three worked examples from that grid:

• one rabbit alone, ten nights: (€25 + €3) × 10 = €280;
• two cats and one rabbit, fifteen nights: cat offer, then €3 × 15 = €45;
• one rabbit alone, thirty nights: €28 × 30 × 0.85 = €714.

For comparison, and for services that are not the same as ours, Rover was advertising an average of 25 € per night in Paris for in-home sitting in September 2026, and Pawshake was showing "from 25 € per night". Those figures were recorded on 6 September 2026 and describe commercial platform listings.

Any estimate stays indicative and is confirmed before booking. You can run your own figure in the price calculator, and the reasoning behind our rates is set out in the article on the cost of in-home pet sitting in Paris.

If your household mixes species, a rabbit and two cats for instance, the guide to multi-pet sitting explains how that works. And if you live outside central Paris, see the page on the inner suburbs.

Frequently asked questions

Do you take the rabbit to your own home?

No. We stay in your home and sleep there every booked night. The animal leaves neither its habitat, nor its room, nor its landmarks. That is the whole principle of house sitting, and it is what separates this arrangement from boarding.

Do you sit small pets other than rabbits?

We have already looked after rabbits, hens, axolotls, frogs and three sugar gliders, alongside cats and dogs. For a species we have never cared for, we say so plainly at the meeting, and we only accept if your sheet and your demonstration let us do the job properly.

How much does rabbit sitting cost in Paris?

One rabbit alone costs €28 per night from 8 nights: a €25 base and €3 supplement. Stays of 1–7 nights use the short-stay rate, with a €50 minimum per stay. 15% off from 30 nights; 20% off from 91 nights. Over 180 nights, a quote is mandatory.

What do you do if something looks unusual?

We compare it with your written sheet, tell you straight away, and ring the vet you have named. We make no diagnosis and we decide nothing on your behalf.

Do we really have to write everything down beforehand?

Yes, and for a small pet it is not negotiable. Without a written record of what normal looks like in your home, we have no serious way of spotting a change. No sheet, no booking. The general in-home pet sitting guide covers the rest of how we work.