Cattery software that handles pen calendars and vaccination checks exists at under GBP 20 a month: Carica Pets lists pens-based plans from GBP 5, and Pawtal one plan at GBP 15. KennelBooker lists plans from about $50. AI can write owner messages, but a person should confirm every vaccine date.
Vendors rarely show a cattery-specific pen calendar on the page, so the test is a demo with your own pen list. Prices below are list prices checked on 27 October 2026; vendors aimed at this trade often price in pounds, so convert at that day's rate.
Write your pen rules before opening a demo
Cat boarding is not hotel booking. A pen is not a room, an owner may book two cats into one unit, the stay length can run from a weekend to a month, and a pen cannot be sold the minute the last cat leaves. Software that cannot hold those rules gives you a calendar that looks tidy and fails in August.
Take an illustrative cattery with 20 pens: 12 standard pens, 4 deluxe pens with a larger run and 4 family units for two or three cats from one household. There is a one-day clean between stays, a vaccination rule that a booster must be in date for the whole stay, and a medication log for older cats. This is the cattery used in the examples below.
The rules a calendar must hold
| Rule | Example | What to ask the vendor |
|---|---|---|
| Pen types with different prices | Standard $18 a night, deluxe $24, family unit $34 (illustrative) | Can each type have its own nightly rate and peak-date rate? |
| Cleaning gap | A pen is blocked for one day after check-out | Can a pen be blocked automatically between stays? |
| More than one cat in a pen | Two cats from one home in a family unit | Does the booking hold several pets and price them per cat? |
| Split stays | A 14-night stay moves from pen 5 to pen 9 on night 8 | Can one booking span two pens? |
| Waiting list | Christmas week full; a cancellation opens a pen | Does the list offer the freed pen to the first owner? |
| Vaccine rule | Booster in date for every night of the stay | Does it check against the departure date, not just the arrival date? |
| Medication and diet notes | Tablet twice daily; renal diet | Where do notes print for the staff on the day? |
The row that matters most is the vaccine rule against the departure date. A cat whose booster expires on day 4 of a 7-night stay passes a check that looks only at arrival. Ask a vendor to show you a booking where the vaccine lapses mid-stay and see what happens.
What the vendors say, checked 27 October 2026
Only some publish prices, and none of the pages I could read describe a cat-specific pen calendar in detail. Treat the table as a starting list and verify each cell in a trial.
| Product | List price | Pens and calendar | Vaccine records | Owner messages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carica Pets | GBP: Bronze 5 a month (up to 5 pens), Silver 10 (up to 10), Gold 20 (unlimited pens, 10 users, 3 locations); annual 55, 110, 220; 14-day trial, no card | A boarding module for stays, availability and rooms, with a dashboard of occupancy and calendar sync | A vaccinations module with reminders and notifications on all plans | Activity logging (feeding, photos, notes) that can be shared with owners; online booking and payment |
| Pawtal | GBP 15 a month or GBP 160 a year, one plan; first 10 bookings free; card payments add 1% on top of Stripe's fees | Cattery listed as a service; a capacity-aware boarding planner, but pen-level detail not described | Vaccination dates stored on pet records; no automatic expiry alerts mentioned | Automatic confirmations, reminders and review requests; no two-way messaging described |
| KennelBooker | Dachshund $49.99 a month (10 boarding rooms), Beagle $65.99 (30), Husky $94.99 (60), Great Dane $122.99 (100); yearly prices are labelled as a 12% discount, though the figures work out nearer 10% (Beagle $714.89); 14-day trial, no card | Colour-coded calendar to prevent double-booking a run or pen; split bookings; waiting lists | Alerts for missing or expired vaccinations at booking and check-in; owners upload certificates | Confirmation and balance emails, SMS reminders 24 hours before, pickup texts, photo postcards mid-stay |
| Revelation Pets | Not on the page I read | Calendar that keeps cats and dogs separate | Records stored on client profiles | Confirmations, reminders and photo updates; a customer portal |
| Avalon Software | Not published | A boarding kennels and catteries package; no detail on the page | Not described | Not described |
| PenAndPaw | Could not read (page needs scripts to show plans) | Its page lists a pen types calendar | Its page lists vaccination records with expiry checks | Its page lists owner updates and AI features; details unverified |
Three honest points follow. First, the cheapest plans cap pens: Carica's Bronze stops at 5 pens and Silver at 10, so a 20-pen cattery needs Gold at GBP 20 a month. Second, KennelBooker's plans are sized in "rooms" and the page does not say how cattery pens are counted, so ask before assuming 20 pens fit the 30-room plan. Third, KennelBooker's navigation mentions an "AI Vaccination Checker", but the page I read gave no detail, so I cannot tell you what it does.
The main example: 20 pens, 400 bookings a year
Suppose the illustrative cattery takes 400 bookings a year at an average stay of 6 nights and $18 to $34 a night, which gives an average booking value of about $120. Annual takings are around $48,000. Compare the software costs, using list prices and no conversion beyond what the pages show.
- Carica Gold: GBP 220 billed yearly, or GBP 240 monthly.
- Pawtal: GBP 160 a year, plus 1 per cent of online card takings on top of Stripe's fees. If $30,000 of the $48,000 is paid online by card, that is about $300 a year in the extra 1 per cent, so roughly GBP 160 plus $300.
- KennelBooker Beagle (30 rooms): $714.89 billed yearly, or $65.99 a month ($791.88).
Spread over 400 bookings, Carica Gold comes to about GBP 0.55 a booking, Pawtal about GBP 0.40 plus the card surcharge, and KennelBooker's Beagle plan about $1.79. A single no-show on a $120 stay costs more than a year of software. That is the correct way to view the price: pick the product that stops double bookings and chases vaccines, then count its saved hours, not its monthly figure.
What it saves in time
Without software: a booking request arrives as a message. You check the paper diary for a free pen (2 minutes), reply (3), ask for vaccine proof (3 more messages across two days), record the dates (2), and send a reminder before arrival (2). About 12 minutes of work, ten of them avoidable. At 400 bookings, that is 80 hours a year. With owner uploads and automatic confirmations, the same booking takes perhaps 4 minutes of your time: reading the upload and approving it. The saving is around 50 hours, which is a full working week, and a good reason to pay GBP 220.
Four catteries, four kinds of fit
A six-pen cattery run from a home garden
Few bookings, mostly regulars. Carica's Bronze plan at GBP 5 a month covers 5 pens, so you would need Silver for six at GBP 10. A spreadsheet may still be enough; try software only if you take bookings online at night.
A twenty-pen cattery with family units
Family units and split stays decide this. Look first at products that list split bookings and waiting lists, and run your Christmas week through the trial. Carica Gold or KennelBooker are worth a test; Pawtal's page does not describe pen-level detail, so ask for a demo of your rule list.
A boarding business with cats and dogs
You need separate capacity pools for each species. Revelation Pets states that its calendar keeps cats and dogs separate; KennelBooker says one plan covers cattery, boarding, daycare and grooming. Check that each species has its own cleaning rule and vaccine list.
A rescue or fostering group
Different needs: no nightly pricing, more of a record of intake and health. Cattery software is a poor fit, and a simple case record is better. Do not buy a booking engine to run a shelter.
Vaccine checks: what to automate and what to keep by hand
The record needs five fields per cat: vaccine name, date given, date of next booster, vet practice and the certificate image. A calendar that stores dates is only half a system. The other half is the check.
- At booking: the software compares the booster date with the departure date. If it lapses before the cat leaves, the booking is held, not confirmed.
- Before arrival: a reminder goes to the owner 14 days out if no certificate has been uploaded.
- At check-in: staff see a green or red flag and compare the certificate to the cat.
- After a booster: the owner uploads the new certificate and the date moves.
Step 3 stays human. A flag in a system is not the same as having looked at the paper. The related process in a grooming salon, with its own failure points, is described in how to automate vaccination checks for a grooming salon.
Using AI to read certificates: a draft, never a decision
Many owners email a photo of a vet card. An assistant can pull out the dates into a table, saving you retyping. A prompt, with a realistic output:
This is a photo of a cat's vaccination card. Extract: vaccine names, date given,
next booster due. If any date is unclear, write "UNCLEAR" instead of guessing.
Return a table, then list anything you were not certain of.An illustrative output: Feline enteritis, flu and calicivirus combined: given 14 March, booster due 14 March next year. Leukaemia: not listed. UNCLEAR: the stamp on the second line is smudged. What you fix: the model may read a 3 as an 8 on handwritten dates, so you compare against the photo every time. If AI cannot read it, ask for a clearer photo rather than letting it fill in the gap. Do not paste owner names or addresses; crop the photo to the cat's details.
AI replies that owners will want to read
Booking enquiry replies
Write a short, warm reply from a small cattery. Use only these facts:
- Standard pen $18/night, deluxe $24, family unit (2-3 cats, one household) $34.
- Booster must be in date for the whole stay; certificate uploaded before arrival.
- Check-in 10:00 to 12:00 or 16:00 to 18:00; check-out by 11:00.
Enquiry: "Two cats, 12 to 19 August. One is on tablets. What would it cost?"
If you are unsure, say you will check. Do not invent availability.The assistant should answer the price (a family unit at $34 for 7 nights is $238 before extras, assuming they share a unit), ask about the tablets and request the certificates, and say availability is being checked. It cannot know whether the pen is free: make sure the calendar, not the chatbot, decides that.
Mid-stay updates
Feed the assistant your keeper's note, "ate well, played with feather wand, a bit shy at first", and ask for a two-sentence update to go with the photo. The result will be warmer than the note and you must keep it truthful. If the note says "off food", the update says so and says what you did; do not let the AI soften it into "a little picky".
Chasing a missing certificate
Draft once, send many times: "Hi [first name], we hold [cat's name]'s booking for [dates], but we need a copy of the vaccination card before we can confirm. Please upload it here by [date]. If a booster is due before the end of the stay, we will need the new date." Plain, polite and specific about the deadline.
For the pet-details step before a booking, how dog groomers collect pet details with AI is a close parallel, and a good checklist for any system's AI claims is in AI booking systems for appointment businesses: what to check.
One booking record, filled in
A good record puts everything staff need on one screen. Here is an illustrative one for the two-cat family-unit booking above, with pet names left as placeholders:
- Stay: Friday 12 August to Friday 19 August, 7 nights, family unit 2.
- Cats: [cat A], 9 years, on a daily thyroid tablet at 08:00; [cat B], 4 years, no medication.
- Vaccines: [cat A] booster due 3 November (in date to departure); [cat B] booster due 17 August, which lapses on night 6. Status: HOLD until a new certificate is uploaded.
- Diet: [cat A] renal food supplied by the owner, 2 pouches a day; [cat B] standard.
- Price: 7 nights at $34 = $238; deposit $60 paid; balance $178 due on arrival.
- Contacts: owner mobile, emergency contact, vet practice.
The status line is the useful part. [cat B]'s booster lapses before departure, so the booking should not show as confirmed. A product that can show "held, waiting for certificate" is worth more than one with a prettier calendar.
Moving from the paper diary in one weekend
Most small catteries switch from a paper diary or a spreadsheet. Plan the move so the trial does not become a second system you run by hand.
- Friday evening, one hour: list your pens and types, nightly rates and peak dates. This is the same register you prepared before the demo.
- Saturday morning, two hours: enter the next three months of bookings. Do not enter history. Add vaccine dates from the cards in each owner's folder.
- Saturday afternoon, thirty minutes: send yourself a test booking and a confirmation, and check how the emails look.
- Sunday, one hour: write the booking form wording, the cancellation rule and the vaccine line, and publish the booking page.
- The week after: keep the paper diary open for seven days in case anything differs, then retire it.
Customer records hold names, phone numbers and sometimes the dates owners will be away, which tells a stranger when a home is empty. Keep that data in the booking system, not in a chat with a public assistant, and ask the vendor how you export or delete an owner's record on request.
A mistake that showed up mid-stay
Illustrative: a cattery's software checks the vaccine at arrival only. A cat arrives for a 10-night stay with a booster due on night 6. Nobody notices until the owner asks, mid-stay, whether the certificate is still valid, and the cattery has to choose between breaking its own rule and a difficult phone call. The fix is a rule against the departure date and a line on the booking form: "Your booster must be in date until [departure date]." Test this specific case in every demo.
A short scoring sheet for trials
Use a 14-day trial on two products. Enter your real pens, then try these checks and score each pass or fail.
- Book a family unit for two cats and price them correctly.
- Create a stay that spans two pens.
- Book a pen the day after a check-out and see the cleaning gap block it.
- Book a cat whose booster lapses mid-stay.
- Cancel a booking and see the waiting list respond.
- Send yourself a booking confirmation and a reminder and read both on a phone.
- Export your customers and bookings.
A product that passes at least six of seven is usable. If you will take card payments online, add the processing fees to the cost: Pawtal's extra 1 per cent is the only one stated in the pages I could read, and the others may differ.
Peak weeks and what to do before them
Christmas and the summer weeks decide your year. Three to four weeks before a peak, open the calendar and block pens for known long stays, open a waiting list and send past owners a booking reminder. A drafted message that says "Christmas bookings open on 1 October; pens fill quickly" takes five minutes with an assistant. The cancellation wording for those weeks is covered in peak-season cancellation wording with AI, and for the bigger picture of comparing pet-business tools, see pet grooming software with AI: features and prices compared.
Cattery software questions
Does the software check vaccinations by itself?
Some products store the dates and alert you when a booster lapses; others only store the dates. None replaces your own look at the certificate, because the record is only as good as what was typed in. Decide your rule first, then test that the software enforces it.
Can AI read a vaccination certificate?
It can pull out dates and vaccine names from a clear photo, but misreads are common on handwriting and stamps. Treat it as a helper that fills a draft record, and have a person confirm every date against the certificate before the booking is accepted.
What is a pen calendar?
A calendar with one row for each pen or unit rather than one for the whole cattery. It shows which pen is occupied on which nights, how long each stay is and where a gap between bookings is too short for cleaning.
Should owners get daily updates?
Many owners value a short note and a photo, but a daily message for every cat adds work. Offer updates at set points, such as arrival and the midpoint of longer stays, and send extra only when something changes, such as a change in appetite.
Is a spreadsheet enough for a small cattery?
For about eight pens and few online bookings, often yes. Once you take bookings online at night, run family units or have a waiting list, a calendar that blocks double bookings and tracks vaccines saves more time than it costs.
Further reads
- Channel Manager for a Bed and Breakfast: Do You Need One? — Another small-accommodation booking decision, answered.
- Dog Boarding Booking Software: Compare Options and Add AI Replies — Gingr, Kennel Booker and Time To Pet compared for a small kennel, plus a reply workflow that uses AI to draft and a person to send.
- Dog Boarding Intake Form: Vaccines, Feeding and Medication Fields — The vaccine, feeding, medication and emergency-authority fields a dog boarding intake form needs, with a staff proof check and a prompt to build it.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: vendor pages for Carica Pets, Pawtal, KennelBooker, Revelation Pets, Avalon Software and PenAndPaw, checked 27 October 2026. Prices are list prices.