Leaving cats alone for 36 hours?

[grannysmiff]

Would you feel comfortable leaving cats alone in the house with lots of food and water around, leaving at say 10am one day and returning at tea time the next?

Fluffballmookins only moves from her seat (throne) a couple of times a day anyway but when we do (abandon) leave her for a few days we always close the bedroom doors as once (out of pure and utter spite) she hacked up a hairball the size of a Tibetan goat on our bed.
She even sent a text taunting us with an image of it, oh and she'd managed to pat with her paw all the coasters from the coffee table onto the floor.

Laska ah yes green flower pot water is a delicacy in this household as well. Usually when there are neighbours around to watch the display.

@Ontheboardwalk same - stagnant water that has trickled thru the soil and collected in the drop trays is super tasty apparently!

boardwalk Yes they do like to show you up don't hey?.. and talking of displays for the Neighbours.. Our (boy) cat likes to dry hump next doors (boy) cat bang smack in the driveway!! (and the other way round)

..I think its something in the puddle water..

Yes MessyJessy17 I have no idea of the differences between a tortoise and a mongoose. It's not like I was being sarcastic or anything. I happen to have two dogs, but then again they could be sparrows or woodlice, such is my inherent inability to differentiate between species.

If you don't like my opinion or the fact I happened to disagree with the majority, then ignore me. I'm allowed to have an opinion and post on here. OP posts an AIBU so presumably she wants responses. It must be difficult to cope when you can only bear to hear opinions that are the same as your's.

And I've just realised you said OP's CATS don't care for my opinion, not OP herself. That's classic.

It's not really a case of just food and water though. Animals need companionship and I would feel awful leaving them for that long. It's really not that controversial to not want to leave a pet for that length of time.

And I've just realised you said OP's CATS don't care for my opinion, not OP herself. That's classic

Well yeah, because the cats have more sense.

Lol are you trying to insult me or OP?

Cats have more sense than most people, I would say.

@WhooooAmI24601 please tell us more about Cat Bastard! Perhaps you could make it a regular feature? I loooove his trips to the vet, London, the ocado van..., 😹😹😹

OP we have left ours for a couple of days. They have generally been absolutely fine. Once when we were away a neighbourhood Cat Bastard came in and sprayed everywhere with a particular dedication to areas that are difficult to clean (behind the bath etc). Any longer than a couple of days we get a cat sitter or neighbour to come in, or we take them away with us which works far better than you would imagine.

We gave up using an automated feeder because NiceButDim cat could never time using it very well - we'd come back to loads of dry food left in half the compartments.

We leave several glasses of water around, because water from a glass on the bedside table is way tastier than the water in the cat bowl.

I don’t leave mine for more than 24 hours but that’s because mine are v needy. Best to leave a few bowls of water around the place in case they spill one.

We have a water fountain which seems to work well.
Now confession time. We have a guy who catsits for us. However he got mixed up about the dates and the cats were left for a week. My cousin goes in every week anyway and she said they seemed 'hungry'. They survived.

Leaving any pet for 36 hours - hamster, dog, cat, tortoise, rat, mouse, flamin' mongoose...is wrong. In my opinion.

Why though?

I wouldn't leave a dog alone for two days but that's because they are more high maintenance than a cat or an animal like a fish/hamster/tortoise that will be quite fine on "minimal maintenance" of just being fed/watered and not exercised/played with for a day or two.

Obviously anything longer would require more care but an overnight trip is fine for most small animals provided you plan appropriately.

I have two indoor cats, I leave them alone all the time and they've not murdered each other yet.

I would have no problems leaving the two of them for 36 hours - they always have dry food down in a large bowl and it normally lasts them 2/3 days when full. They get wet food every other day. They have a large "watercooler" type bowl, when full it can last a week (though I change the water every three days as both cats actually prefer "stale" water.

If I was going away from Friday morning to Saturday evening I'd make sure the dry food bowl was full, feed them their wet food, fill the water bowl (and leave the bathroom tap to drip with the plug in - over the course of 2 days it won't be enough to fill the sink and even if it did it would easily be dealt with by the overflow hole - so there's fresh water if they did manage to knock over their water bowl (for the first time ever) and make sure they had fresh litter trays.

They'd be fine for that amount of time, at worst they'd sulk for a while when I got home, but they get over that in a day or two.

Any longer and I pay my younger cousin to drop in every day to feed them, refill the water and clean their litter trays and leave the TV on for a few hours

I would (and do). But they have access to the outside for pooping and we leave lots of those timers with wet food in (and ice packs). Although I prefer asking a friend to stay over (so do they).