business trip

ekekekek07

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i will be on a business for three days in may and am a little worried about my cat. he is a very affectionate two year old boy. will he flip out when i don't come home? will he sit at the door and meow all night? i live in an apartment complex and don't want to deal with noise violations. my friend will stop by after work on the second day to make sure he has food/water/clean litter. boarding a cat would be more traumatic than leaving him alone, right? i don't want him to be back in a cage, so i'd prefer to leave him at home.
 

robertm

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If your cat is not used to you being away from home for any extended period of time, then yeah, he might very well "flip out" while you're gone. It's really hard to predict. Is he normally a high-strung, clingy cat? Or is he more laid-back?

Shortly before you leave, could you get a T-shirt sweaty and put it under his food bowl, or somewhere else around the apartment where he likes to hang out? This way he'll still have your scent around, which he'd probably appreciate. In his mind it might be the next best thing to you actually being home.

Most important, is there any way that the friend that you mentioned, or somebody else, can stop by your apartment at least once per day, not just one time on the second day? I think that would certainly help matters. The litter box(es) would be cleaner, at the very least. And if your cat eats canned food, they would be able to give that food to him, rather than just replenishing the dry food bowl and changing the water. And you didn't mention it, but these people should also spend some time playing with your cat, if he's willing. He's only 2 years old and probably has too much energy to just sit around and sleep for the three days that you'll be gone. Of course if he doesn't already know these people or is a scaredy cat, this might stress him out more.

I can understand your reasons for not wanting to board your cat. I feel the same way. But one of the benefits of boarding is that there are people around to cater to the cat's needs. It's obviously impractical for you to replicate that arrangement at home, but please try to have people stop in to check up on your cat more frequently than you had intended.
 

yiplong

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No worry about it, the cat will be fine as long as you put out sufficient food and water. Get those 7 day rotating feeding dish and water fountain if you will be on this type of trip often. If this is a single-event thing, just leave the food and water out for the cat.
the following article shows you how to handle cats while away:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news...inks_cats_miss

"I just dump some Purina in the bowl, and I'm gone," Pullman said. "And do the cats give a :censor::censor::censor::censor:? No, they do not. Why? Because they're cats."
 

zoethor2

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Really depends on the cat.

My beau's kitty seems to have a grand old time when we leave -- we always joke he's throwing kitty parties with the parents away from home -- but also LOVES when we get back to snuggle him.

My cats got left alone for a week, the two siblings together, and it was clear that they never gave any sort of a crap that we were gone. They're self-sufficient little critters, and as long as the food bowl stayed full, they could live just fine without us for a week.

But I've definitely heard of people leaving cats and having the cat be totally depressed and upset about the owner's absence.
 
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