Leave or give? Going away, cat at home dillema!

[username198372]

We are going away for two weeks over Christmas and feel torn about leaving our cat alone in the ( cold and dark) house. He's got a cat flap so totally free to go in and out whenever. Neighbours will come to feed twice a day but we thought the two weeks can be a long time for a young cat who generally enjoys the company of humans. A colleague at work offered to host our cat for the entire two weeks in her flat (no garden so hopefully can't run away).

The argument for leaving him at home is that cats don't like to move and can get a bit crazy if change environment. But the argument against leaving him is that if he feels his humans left him, he will run away. He has a history of going places for long periods of time, and he is at this age when exploring the outdoors his favourite thing!

What would you recommend then? Leave or give???

Thanks again. Your stories and suggestions are great!

I think it's a NO for transfer to my colleague's house, he may run away, then will never be friends again!

Not keen on cattery option, had a quick look around on couple of websites and pictures don't look that great..

I'll place a note on Nextdoor in our area and fingers crossed someone will know a sitter or even be one!

If he can get some human contact every day I think he would prefer his garden and all his cat mates around (even if they just teas eachother..)

I still worry about timing with a sitter, unless someone is here 24/7 they very likely to miss him completely...

We go away in the summer for 2 weeks and my 2 cats have been fine with it. We have a cat sitter that visits twice a day. Heating is on a timer anyway so it would go on/off as usual.

Cattery everytime - as long as you can find a good one

One of our cats became very ill with a blocked urinary tract when we were on holiday. It was only the vigilance of the cattery owner who went back to check on on him at 11pm, because there was something about his behaviour that wasn't quite right, and then driving 50 miles at 90mph to the nearest 24 hour animal hospital that saved him as his bladder was at the point of rupturing.

Wow Lunde, that's lucky.

I used to work at a cattery and honestly we barely spent any time together the animals we cared for (I'm USA based) it was just a quick clean and feed. When I was charged to the cat room I would always allow the cat to roam the room (with a closed door) but many of my coworkers didn't. We use a family member or friend and pay them to live in our house for the time being so they can care for our animals (we have 3 dogs 2 cats and 2 guinea pigs so boarding animals isn't a good fit anymore)