Scrappy, friendly, animal-loving couple (1 doctoral student, 1 fitness trainer)

About this sitter

We are Jenna and Nici, a creative duo with a shared passion for connecting with people and exploring the world.

Jenna is a fiction writer and freelance translator currently completing a PhD in History and Cultural Studies. Born and raised in New York City, she grew up biculturally and bilingually, spending much of her adult life between New York and Berlin, with countless adventures in between. With over 15 years of freelance experience, she’s worked in diverse settings, from managing cafés in France to painting houses in Vermont. Adaptability, humor, and resilience are at the heart of her work and life.

Nici has a Masters of Education in English, Political Science, and Sports Science and works as a freelance fitness coach. They’re a warm, empathetic caretaker who brings thoughtfulness and energy to everything they do. At 34, they’ve traveled extensively across Europe and the U.S., are fluent in German, English, and Polish, and love creating spaces filled with care and connection—for people and animals alike.

Together, we co-founded *Safer Sex Berlin* with Jenna’s sister, an NGO dedicated to advocating for gender equality in sexual health care. Whether supporting our community through advocacy work, writing stories, or coaching fitness classes, we pour our creativity, compassion, and commitment into every project.

Most important for anyone reading this profile: we are enthusiastic animal sitters who love filling homes with warmth and care while ensuring your furry (or not-so-furry!) friends feel loved. From Berlin to anywhere the road takes us, we bring curiosity, resourcefulness, and genuine joy to the work we do and the connections we build.

Why they want to house sit

The essential need in our lives right now is quiet space—for reading, writing, heads-down working, and recharging. We've often found the most inspiration and creativity away from home, away from our everyday lives -- and out in the great world beyond. Housesitting offers a unique, gratifying, and often mind-expanding way get out there (not to mention it works well on our grad-student/bodywork/NGO-founders budget). Combined with our shared love for travel and our belief in the mutually beneficial nature of the housesitting project, this is what motivates us to care for homes and pets with warmth and attention.

Beyond that, we're here for the animals! Our transatlantic, often peripatetic lifestyle, which includes significant care-giving duties for an ageing parent in NYC, does not lend itself to responsible pet ownership. We gotta get our cuddles somewhere ;)

Their experience

We’ve tended to everything from gardens to apartments, inboxes to pets, aging grandparents to crying children, and lots more in between.

Between us, we have multiple decades of experience with and love for animals. Jenna’s time in Virginia included living in a hut in the middle of a wildlife refuge for wounded animals, where she cared for black bears and deer, dressing wounds and hand-feeding them daily. The farm also boarded horses; while Jenna doesn’t ride, she has experience helping to care for them.

Nici's history with animal care includes a longer stint in Tuscany taking care of horses as well as several catsitting and dogsitting stays through friends and friends of friends. They're always the one on call to accompany friends and their pets to vet appointments and dog parks. They themselves grew up surrounded by animals, including their grandma’s dog, a guinea pig named Maxi, and two hamsters named Banana and Peanut.

Between the two of us, we’ve cared for cats, dogs, rabbits, ferrets, lizards, rats, and more—some strays, some pets, and some wild. While we’re both a bit too nomadic to have pets of our own right now, we leap at any chance to petsit and share some animal love.

Beyond animal care, our odd jobs have run the gamut: from clearing leeches out of ponds and helping homesteaders clear properties to selling Christmas trees on New York streets and vintage clothes for an itinerant salesman. Whether it’s people, animals, or spaces, we bring care, responsibility, and a love of connection to everything we do.

What can they bring to the assignment

Reliability, flexibility, composure, and experience.

Between us, we have four decades of house-sitting, pet-sitting, plant-sitting and odd-jobbing under our belts -- all while managing freelance careers, completing graduate degrees, and giving back to our home community. We are experts in time management, and bring care and compassion to everything we do.

In our experience, the key to successful sitting is clear, transparent, open, and friendly communications. When expectations are named, boundaries are set, and warmth is mutual, things run smoothly -- even when something inevitably goes wrong along the way, whether it's a burst pipe, a delayed flight, or a sick pet.

To survive as freelancers, we've had to be resourceful, responsible and maintain a sense of humor. We won't list all our odd jobs, but here are a few relevant highlights: line cook at a B&B in rural Virginia, waitress at a remote beach resort in Vietnam, manager of a cafe in southern France, landscaper in New Hampshire, housepainter in Vermont, Christmas-tree seller in Manhattan, barback in Hannover. We can deal with pretty much anything that's thrown at us, and we're good at adapting to any and all circumstances.

Thanks to sites like MindMyHouse, and inspired by our shared curiosity for the world, we've traveled quite a lot and are adept at navigating extremely diverse environments, cultures, communities, and viewpoints. Between the two of us, we've worked, sitted, or traveled all over Europe and the United States, as well as Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, Tunisia, Vietnam, China, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Mexico. We both speak native English and German and proficient French (along with some very basic Spanish).