The terms for bookings, Member Passes, and care at Meow Homez.
Thank you for choosing Meow Homez. These Terms & Conditions (the Terms) are the agreement between you and Meow Homez (“we”, “us”, “our”) for cage-free cat boarding at our home in Ottawa, Ontario, and for related services such as Member Passes and the Memory Vault gallery. We have kept them in plain language so it is clear what you can expect from us, and what we ask of you in return. If anything is unclear, please ask before you book — we are always happy to explain.
When you submit a booking request, purchase a Member Pass, or otherwise use our services or website (meowhomez.ca), you accept these Terms. Please only book if you agree with them — and please reach out first if you have any questions.
By booking, you confirm that:
In these Terms we call the person who books and is responsible for the cat the guardian (“you”, “your”). Each booked period of care is a stay.
Meow Homez provides cage-free, whole-house group boarding. Guest cats are not kept in cages or kennels; they share the supervised common spaces of our home, with room to roam, climb, nap, and be social at their own pace.
Every stay includes:
We are a boarding home, not a veterinary clinic: we do not provide veterinary treatment, grooming, or behavioural therapy. We aim to share updates every day; on rare busy days an update may arrive a little late, and we appreciate your patience when it does.
Every booking is a request until we accept it. Acceptance may be automatic, or may follow a short review — for example, for a first stay, a vaccination check, or to make sure the group is a good fit. We may decline a request at our reasonable discretion; if we do, nothing is owed for that request and any amount already collected for it is returned or credited.
The price for your stay is the price displayed at the time of booking. Premiums may apply for statutory holidays and other high-demand dates, and are shown in your quoted total before you confirm.
We accept payment by secure card processing through Helcim, our payment processor, and by account credit or Member Pass balance (see Section 5). Available balances are applied automatically in this order:
A card convenience fee may apply to card payments; if it does, it is shown at checkout before you pay. Your booking is confirmed once it is paid in full or fully covered by your credit and pass balances.
Plans change — we understand. Cancellations, reschedules, and extensions are requests, and approved changes take effect once we confirm them. Reschedules and extensions are subject to availability, so the earlier you ask, the more we can do.
A Member Pass is a prepaid boarding balance purchased at preferred rates. Member Passes:
Account credit is a balance on your Meow Homez account — for example, from an approved change that lowered a stay's price. Credit is applied automatically to your future bookings before any other payment method.
Neither account credit nor Member Pass balances are redeemable for cash, except where the law requires otherwise.
Because our guests share a home, a few health requirements protect every cat in our care — including yours.
Rabies vaccination is required. Every guest must have a current Rabies vaccination, with a valid certificate provided to us before drop-off. FVRCP vaccination is strongly recommended.
The open, social setting is what makes Meow Homez feel like home rather than a kennel. We screen every cat before admission and supervise the group carefully. Even so, no group setting can be entirely risk-free, and some risks are inherent to cats sharing a space:
Your acknowledgment. By booking a stay, you acknowledge these inherent risks of group boarding and accept them on behalf of your cat. We will always do our part: attentive supervision, careful introductions, and prompt communication if anything seems off.
If your cat becomes unwell or is injured during a stay, their wellbeing comes first.
Drop-off and pick-up happen at the times scheduled in your booking, within our daily windows of 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM. If you are running late, a quick message lets us plan around it.
Abandonment. If a cat remains uncollected 14 or more days after the scheduled pick-up and, despite reasonable and documented attempts, we cannot reach you or your emergency contact, the cat may be deemed abandoned. In that case we may place the cat with a licensed shelter, rescue, or municipal animal services in accordance with applicable Ontario law, and all accrued boarding and care costs remain recoverable from you. This is a last resort we hope never to use, and we will always try every contact route first.
You remain responsible for your cat's actions during a stay. If your cat causes injury to a person or another animal, or damage to property, you are responsible for the resulting costs.
You also agree to indemnify Meow Homez — that is, to cover our reasonable losses, costs, and expenses — against third-party claims that arise from your cat's actions or from your breach of these Terms, except to the extent caused by our own negligence.
Photographing our guests is one of the best parts of the job. During a stay we photograph and film your cat for your daily updates and your private Memory Vault gallery. Gallery access is provided through time-limited share links that follow the Memory Vault tier on your booking: Moments (included) lets you view this stay's album online until the end of the pickup day (11:59 p.m. Eastern Time); Memories lets you view your cat's full album — every stay with us — for 7 days after pickup; and Forever adds downloads to the full album for the same 7 days, so you can save the original files to your own device. Files you have downloaded are yours to keep. Once a share link expires, online access ends; we do not host gallery media indefinitely, so Forever customers should download their files within the 7-day window.
We may also feature guest photos and videos in our own marketing — for example on our website or social media — unless you ask us not to. You can opt out at any time, including after a stay, by emailing [email protected]. We will honour your request promptly and remove the content from the channels we control.
We care for every guest as if they were our own, and we also need to set fair boundaries on our legal responsibility.
The safety and comfort of every guest comes first. We may decline a booking or a drop-off where we reasonably believe group boarding is not a safe fit. If, during a stay, a cat shows aggression or signs of serious illness, we may separate them from the group for everyone's protection and ask you (or your emergency contact) to arrange an early pick-up. We will always contact you promptly and handle the situation with care.
We send booking updates — confirmations, receipts, schedule changes, and stay updates — by email and WhatsApp to the details you provide. Keeping your contact details and emergency contact current is your responsibility, and we are not responsible for messages missed because the details on file were out of date.
Meow Credits are our way of saying thank you: after a completed, paid stay, we may add credits to your account under our rewards program (the "Rewards" page describes the current earn rates). By participating, you agree to the following:
Questions about these Terms, or anything you would like us to walk through before you book? We would much rather over-explain than surprise you.
Meow Homez — cage-free cat boarding in Old Ottawa East
Thank you for trusting Meow Homez with your cat — we do not take it lightly.