Profile information
Host rating
100 %
Last replied
7 Sep 2025
Reply rate
92.0 %
Usually responds within 6 days
Feedback
31
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Badges (4)
Details
Description
+++++ SOON TO CHANGE LOCATION +++++
We are about to move to Italy with the actual move planned for the month of December 20205. We are currently house hunting and have requested a change of our workaway location, for now to the capital of the region we intend to move to. The actual place will be somewhere in that region, but we have no precise detail yet. A precise Update will most likely follow in October.
We do not need any further cat sitting help in Germany but will definitely need help in our new place in Italy in December, when we bring down the first bunch of cats and travel back to Germany to get the rest of them. :)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
The cats and us - how it all started
Our cat story began in 2020, when we moved from the UK to Italy with an "open end approach", not knowing how long we might stay or where we might go next.
We started taking care of the many feral street cats and occasional stray dogs and before we knew it ended up with 10 + cats inside the house who became our permanent family. In collaboration with local vets and an adoption sanctuary in the North of Italy we managed to get a few more dozens off the streets and into families.
For annoying bureaucratic reasons we had to move to Germany in December 2022. Zwickau was a random choice really, as neither of us has any connection with the place. Now it's time to start fresh in Italy :)
We got into Workaway thanks to a Couchsurfer who stayed with us in Italy and told us about her cat sitting experience through the platform. It sounded perfect for us, as especially at that time we sometimes had to leave the country and needed reliable people to look after our cats.
1. We are away
Sometimes things in life come up and we have to leave town or the country. In that case, we always need people to stay with the cats. If this scenario comes up, ideally we want to spend a few days with you to show you everything and to make sure you know the quirks of each cat and all the "security measures" to keep them and our belongings safe 😹
While we are away you simply take our role, you live in our house, take care of yourself and do all the cat duties. That means feeding, giving water, cleaning the litter boxes and loads of cuddling and playing. Apart from that you are free to do whatever you wish, stay in, go out, explore the town, etc..
2. We are home
When we are at home we simply share the house with you, we're happy if you help cleaning the litter boxes and keeping the house "tidy", in inverted commas because the cats have changed the definition of the word 😂
You don't need to worry about the feeding. As for the cuddling and playing, our cats love all the attention they can get.
Also if you want to get involved into the planning of our future Cat Sanctuary, if you have any ideas and if you're good with Social Media, your help is very much appreciated in that area as well!
About us:
We lived in the UK for most of our lives but are both only half British and half in identity crisis 🤣. We got married in 2019 and moved to Italy one year later. We are vegan and really love cooking and trying out new things and experimenting in the kitchen.
Our cooking styles are respectively fairly different from each other's so we certainly cover all types of dishes. Levent is an excellent chef, does amazing burgers, sandwiches and most importantly Turkish specialties. I (Sonia) claim to make better pasta dishes than any Italian and I often cook huge vegetable stews and soups, but Levent is definitely the main chef, as I hardly have time and not quite as much passion for really nice cooking.
We have no fixed times for eating and we have our individual rhythms, we basically never eat at the same time, so please feel free to just listen to your own hunger drive and eat whenever you want.
Our daily life is rather unspectacular. We get up early and don't go to bed super late mostly and work from home and take care of the animals in between. We very rarely go out in the evening, even though we'd like to do it more often. On the weekends, provided the weather is nice, we usually go to the lake.
As for the rest, we're fairly uncomplicated people, we take each day as it comes without expectations, we're calm but also love good conversations and love to hear about other people's life journeys and experiences.
Types of help and learning opportunities
Animal Care
Help around the house
Help with Computers/ Internet
Interests
Pets
Languages
Vegetarian or vegan
Writing
Cooking & food
Animals
Beach
Cultural exchange and learning opportunities
Animals always teach so so much. When we're not away, we would personally also be around with the workawayer(s). We can teach you a lot about health and nutrition, about life in general the way we live it and see it.
Help
Quick summary of the things already explained in the introduction:
- cat feeding
- cleaning litter boxes
- cat cuddling and playing
- keeping the house "tidy"
- potentially helping with our cat sanctuary Social Media presence
Languages
Languages spoken
German: Fluent
English: Fluent
Italian: Fluent
Turkish: Fluent
Spanish: Intermediate
French: Intermediate
Arabic: Beginner
Japanese: Beginner
Dutch: BeginnerThis host offers a language exchange
Languages are one of the most fascinating things to dedicate your time to. The most present languages in our daily life are English, Turkish, German and Italian. We're actually sometimes speaking some hybrid language of them all but we can definitely teach anyone interested a bit of any of those languages. On our bookshelf there are actually many more study books for various languages of the world, but sometimes more for decoration 😁
Accommodation
Workawayers always have their private bedroom.
What else ...
We have heard some not so nice stories from workawayers concerning previous experiences. We do not use this platform to exploit people, make people work for hours on end while being lazy ourselves or anything like that. We think this platform is perfect for our cat vs. travel dilemma and are genuinely interested in the cultural exchange that comes with hosting.
And if we do manage to build up that cat sanctuary in Spain there will be so many new exciting things to do for all of us!
For how things are now, you'll have plenty of "time off", you can go to town or other near by cities any time and just feel free and at home. We will host you like old friends and hopefully when you leave you are a new friend :)
A little more information
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Can host families
Can host digital nomads
Definitely.
Can possibly accept pets
Depends on the pet I would say. Our cats are terrified of and/or super hostile towards dogs, most of them would hide under the sofa in fear of death, others might viciously attack the dog, so that wouldn't work. Another cat could maybe work I guess, but it would probably just take a while for everyone to accept each other :) In the unlikely case you're doing workaway with any other animal, if they're small (tortoise, hamster, rat, spider,...), that would be actually super cool and we'd be up for it :D
How many Workawayers can stay?
Two
My animals / pets
Chat with Workawayers who've visited this host
Feedback (14)
We're very grateful for Justine's help and enjoyed having her around. It was very easy to fully trust her with the cats and she is super reliable and also a very interesting person with an interesting lifestyle and impressive skills regarding her and her husband's own… read more
They invited me to spend time with them and their friends at Lake Stausee Oberwald, even though it was their day off.
I really appreciated and enjoyed the vegan meals Levant prepared.
The cats and tortoises are beyond adorable.
The work was easy cleaning litter trays,… read more
Photos
Chat with Workawayers who've visited this host
Feedback
These are extra optional ratings when members leave feedback. The average rating left for each option is displayed.
Accuracy of profile:
(4.9)
Cultural exchange:
(4.9)
Communication:
(4.9)
We're very grateful for Justine's help and enjoyed having her around. It was very easy to fully trust her with the cats and she is super reliable and also a very interesting person with an interesting lifestyle and impressive skills regarding her and her husband's own… read more
They invited me to spend time with them and their friends at Lake Stausee Oberwald, even though it was their day off.
I really appreciated and enjoyed the vegan meals Levant prepared.
The cats and tortoises are beyond adorable.
The work was easy cleaning litter trays,… read more
Nour was our… read more
Sonja and Levent are so nice and uncomplicated,free and hippie spirits :)) You feel like home there immediately!
It wasnt even a work for me,I had lot of time for myself too and cats were amazing! I have just one cat at home and I was very curious how it is with so many,but they were all… read more
Cecilia and César are a lovely lovely couple which we enjoyed hosting very much. We resorted to speaking a mixture of Italian and English and surely had some funny language "problems" but we managed to communicate well after all.
Cecilia and César were very enthusiastic in helping with… read more
I was happy that I could taste their delicious vegan food and that I could just feel like being at home.
We took some walks at the beach while also cleaning up and had some interesting conversations.
I wish you all… read more
Whishing you all the… read more
