In general, finding a place to rent with pets can be an difficult task. Add in the fact that you’ll be needing furnished apartments and it becomes quite intimidating. But don’t get ahead of yourself! We’ve found that it is challenging for sure, but by no means impossible. Check out my previous post on how to find housing while travel nursing for more general tips. In this post I’ll focus on the pet-specific challenges we’ve faced and tips for how to work through them.

Our biggest tip is…

don’t be afraid to ask

First off, don’t rule out listings that say no pets, ask anyway! There are SO many listings on Furnished Finder that don’t have the label “pets welcome,” but that doesn’t mean people are 100% opposed and won’t consider renting to someone with pets on a case by case basis. It’s worth asking. We’ve had multiple instances where landlords were able to work with us and reconsidered their pet policy.

As I talk about in my post about Travel Nursing with Cats, it’s important to make a plan for maintaining the homes that you rent (I’ll summarize some of that in the next section as well). If you have a plan for how to protect and maintain the apartment you’re renting, you can share that with prospective landlords to help assuage their concerns of renting to someone with pets. Explain your plan for keeping the apartment/furniture safe to them and be willing to add in extra measures if they would like you to.

You can also offer a refundable pet deposit if they haven’t already brought it up, as a protection for them. Obviously this is less convenient for you as the travel nurse in the situation that you don’t get it back, but it’s a very reasonable ask in our opinion if you want to rent an apartment with pets. Many landlords who are “pet-friendly” will already have this laid out and know how much they want to ask for when it comes to a pet deposit. Make sure that you’re always confirming the amount, whether it’s in addition to the regular deposit or not, and whether it’s refundable.

prevent damage to the apartment/furniture

Some easy ways that you can help to maintain & protect the apartment you’re renting from your pets include:

–cat tape: wide double-sided tape that you put on the edges of furniture that your cats may scratch (affiliate link)

-put away breakables (if your cats are crazy like ours, this may include picture frames hanging on the walls…)

-play with your pets often to help them get their energy out in a non-destructive and supervised way

-bring lots of toys to keep them entertained and a scratching post (or two!)

-bring multiple litter boxes with you – apparently a lot of vets recommend you have one more litter box than you have cat(s), this seems a bit excessive to us, but up until this current contract we’ve brought two litter boxes with us each time just to be on the safe side. We also make sure to be super diligent about changing the litter box every 1-2 days.

-keep overnight trips away short – don’t feel like you can’t go on little trips and leave the cats behind, but shorter trips give your cats less time to get antsy and possibly destroy something.

-clip your pets nails regularly

I go into greater detail on this in my post: Travel Nursing with Cats.

find a local vet office

Another little tip that we have when it comes to finding housing is to make sure you locate a local vets office close by. In general, we try to avoid relying on vet offices that don’t know our cats, but it’s good to have the information on hand for where you can take them in an emergency. Otherwise, if we just have a question about whether or not they should be seen, we rely on our vet’s office back home in New Hampshire that has already seen and treated both Pepper & Sage. It’s a huge help to have a home vet office that you know and trust. We couldn’t be happier with our vet in New Hampshire. They are so willing to give us information and advice over the phone whenever we need, even though they’re not getting business from us while we’re out on contract and they know that.