I am BEYOND angry with my cat sitter.
My partner and I adopted two little girl kitties who were sick. They're on a special diet right now and we didn't want to transition them to any kind of kibbles or anything before Christmas because they'd just gotten over being sick and we need to supervise new foods because one of them is VERY allergic to rice and we may have other allergies we don't know yet. So we called up our friend who lives next door and who lived with us over the summer, free of charge. We've never asked for a PENNY in return for looking after her son or letting her live with us or anything, so we didn't think it would be a big deal to ask her to look after the cats, provided she wasn't going out of town. We made up meals for the babies (who are two, but we refer to them as 'the babies' because they're tiny) and put them in labelled baggies in our fridge. We had her over to show her where the food was for the big cats and how to refill the cat fountain.
Now, normally when we go out of town for up to three days, we just stack up loads of kibble for the big cats, clean the litter pans and leave out extra water, up higher so Leo won't drown himself in it. We also leave the sink on a tiny trickle. We didn't do that because we had a cat sitter coming over to look after them.
We got back tonight and all the labeled baggies were gone for the babies, so we're assuming they got fed. The big cats, however, had NO food and their fountain was empty. It takes around three to four days for the fountain to be TOTALLY empty and dry (I forgot to fill it once right after we got it). It was dry and making the most AWFUL sound when we got home. Their food dish was totally empty and all the crumbs were gone (they usually drop crumbs around their food dish and they only eat those if they run out of food for some reason, like if we go out or whatever. We don't feed them at regular times of day--they're free-range fed so we just feed when we notice the dish is getting low or when they ask for more), so I know they'd been out of food for at least 24 hours for the floor to be that clean.
Leo is so upset by this that he started peeing outside of the litter pan. As far as I can tell, he waited until we got home to take his first 'outside' pee, which he did immediately after we got home.
I'm livid. Any time that Leo pees outside of the litter pan, we have to start at day-one with litter pan training. He has to be put in an empty room with nothing but food, a very shallow dish of water and his litter pan for at least 48 hours, then we can start letting him have supervised visitations to the outside world. I HATE doing this to him. I wanted to come home and spend time with my babies, not lock Leo away.
I'm FURIOUS with her and I just can't IMAGINE how she thought this was okay. I'm glad that the babies were, evidently, well looked after, but the big cats needed care too! We didn't leave them ready to be self-sufficient for any length of time because they shouldn't have needed to.
How can ANYONE let this happen to someone else's cats? I'm so upset I can't even think. Leo doesn't NEED this crap. I wish I'd gone with my first instinct and taken the cats with us to my partner's house, but it would have cost us about 200 bucks to take them on the train!
My partner and I adopted two little girl kitties who were sick. They're on a special diet right now and we didn't want to transition them to any kind of kibbles or anything before Christmas because they'd just gotten over being sick and we need to supervise new foods because one of them is VERY allergic to rice and we may have other allergies we don't know yet. So we called up our friend who lives next door and who lived with us over the summer, free of charge. We've never asked for a PENNY in return for looking after her son or letting her live with us or anything, so we didn't think it would be a big deal to ask her to look after the cats, provided she wasn't going out of town. We made up meals for the babies (who are two, but we refer to them as 'the babies' because they're tiny) and put them in labelled baggies in our fridge. We had her over to show her where the food was for the big cats and how to refill the cat fountain.
Now, normally when we go out of town for up to three days, we just stack up loads of kibble for the big cats, clean the litter pans and leave out extra water, up higher so Leo won't drown himself in it. We also leave the sink on a tiny trickle. We didn't do that because we had a cat sitter coming over to look after them.
We got back tonight and all the labeled baggies were gone for the babies, so we're assuming they got fed. The big cats, however, had NO food and their fountain was empty. It takes around three to four days for the fountain to be TOTALLY empty and dry (I forgot to fill it once right after we got it). It was dry and making the most AWFUL sound when we got home. Their food dish was totally empty and all the crumbs were gone (they usually drop crumbs around their food dish and they only eat those if they run out of food for some reason, like if we go out or whatever. We don't feed them at regular times of day--they're free-range fed so we just feed when we notice the dish is getting low or when they ask for more), so I know they'd been out of food for at least 24 hours for the floor to be that clean.
Leo is so upset by this that he started peeing outside of the litter pan. As far as I can tell, he waited until we got home to take his first 'outside' pee, which he did immediately after we got home.
I'm livid. Any time that Leo pees outside of the litter pan, we have to start at day-one with litter pan training. He has to be put in an empty room with nothing but food, a very shallow dish of water and his litter pan for at least 48 hours, then we can start letting him have supervised visitations to the outside world. I HATE doing this to him. I wanted to come home and spend time with my babies, not lock Leo away.
I'm FURIOUS with her and I just can't IMAGINE how she thought this was okay. I'm glad that the babies were, evidently, well looked after, but the big cats needed care too! We didn't leave them ready to be self-sufficient for any length of time because they shouldn't have needed to.
How can ANYONE let this happen to someone else's cats? I'm so upset I can't even think. Leo doesn't NEED this crap. I wish I'd gone with my first instinct and taken the cats with us to my partner's house, but it would have cost us about 200 bucks to take them on the train!
