Nine instructions, and only one that really matters

Nine numbered lines, hand-written in a careful, unhurried script. Eight of them are just texture — a row of loops and crossbars that reads as writing without reading as words. The ninth is legible, set apart in a different ink: he will pretend he hasn't had it. Beside instruction four, a small arrow points to a second short line added later, in a second pen.

Eight instructions tell whoever's sitting what to do. The ninth tells them what to expect.

What's actually written on the sheet?

Nine numbered instructions in one hand, plus one addition in a second.

The first eight are procedural — feeding, timing, the ordinary mechanics of a day — and they're left illegible on purpose; a stranger reading this over your shoulder doesn't need them and wouldn't retain them anyway. The ninth is the only line drawn clearly enough to read, and it isn't an instruction at all. Beside the fourth line, a different pen has added a short note and an arrow pointing back to it — somebody reread the list after writing it and decided one line needed more.

Why is the ninth line the only one that had to be legible?

Because it's the only one that hands over something a stranger couldn't work out on their own.

The first eight are procedure — do this, then this, at roughly this time — and procedure can usually be inferred, guessed at, or gotten slightly wrong without much cost. He will pretend he hasn't had it is different. It's a fact about one specific animal's character, learned over however long the household has lived with him, and it can't be reasoned out from first principles by somebody standing in for an afternoon. Eight lines transfer a routine. The ninth transfers what the household actually knows.

What does the second pen at instruction four tell you?

That the list wasn't finished the first time it was written.

Somebody wrote nine lines, read them back, and decided one of them needed more — an arrow to a short addition rather than a rewrite of the whole sentence. That's a small, ordinary edit, the kind any list gets once its author imagines a stranger actually trying to follow it. It's also the only visible evidence on the sheet that anyone thought hard about getting this right, because the other eight lines look finished on the first pass.

Who is a list like this actually for?

Whoever's coming in without the year of context the household already has.

That might be a neighbour who already holds a key and needs nothing more than a note on a step most days, or somebody staying properly, for a weekend or longer, who needs the fuller version. The list scales to the length of the absence — a line on paper for a short one, nine numbered points and a second pen for anything longer.

Does the sheet ever double as a record of something more than feeding?

It can, alongside other instruments the household already keeps.

A sitter working from a numbered list is often also working from a phone alarm set for a specific task, or checking in on a screen showing what the animal is doing in another room while everyone else is out. None of these individually says much. Together, they're how a household hands its judgement to somebody who hasn't earned it the slow way — by living there.

Do I need permission to print a list like this?

No — a household's own handwritten instructions for its own house are nobody's to license.

The instructions belong to whoever wrote them, for whoever they're handing the house to, and nothing about that requires anyone else's consent. What would need permission is copying a specific, identifiable document somebody else wrote — a real person's actual handwriting, used without asking. Drawn or set in a generic hand, a numbered list is just a numbered list. Style has no owner. A work does.

Does it print well?

Yes — the sheet's texture and the handwriting's line both hold up cleanly at garment size.

The illegible lines work as broken, looping strokes rather than fine cursive detail, so they survive the weave without needing to resolve into readable letters — that's the point of them. The ninth line and the second-pen addition are set slightly bolder and in a second colour, which keeps them legible even where the rest of the sheet goes soft. Cream or bone grounds let the paper texture read as paper rather than as noise.

How do I get one made?

Describe the list at JustOG — how many lines, and which one gets left legible. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

Eight lines nobody will ever need to read, and one that whoever's sitting will remember for years.