What do you do with your cats when you go on your hols - and is this an acceptable solution?

[Sunhasgothishaton]

I have two cats. 99% of the time when we go away we go Mon-Fri or Fri-Mon. At the moment we are using a cattery, which while ok, gives the cats no outdoor time and of course they are surrounded in very close proximity of unknown cats. When we go on longer holidays then the cattery will still be what we use.

We are thinking of buying our own cat run - something like this: www.catrun.org.uk/19-amy-cat-house-and-cat-run.html

We have the 5 day cat feeders and the running water fountains

Would 2 cats be okay in this without human interaction for 3 days max i.e. we'd see them on the Monday and Friday but not for Tues-Thurs.

I wouldn't want to leave them in the house, as more chance of being injured and even more so with leaving them access to the wider world.

Any thoughts of this setup? And what do you do with your cats?

Catteries can be very different to each other so it is worth looking at others to see if they are better.

I think the length of time they can be left depends on a lot of factors. In this heat and with a naughty kitten here I wouldn't leave mine more than 24 hours.

In the winter and if they all got on I've left mine Friday lunchtime to Sunday evening. When I've done that ive put down more than enough food and several dog sized bowls of water.

Why do you worry about the cats hurting themselves in your home when you say that they spend most of their time indoors?

Fluffy I wasn't arguing just curious like I said I couldn't find it when looking, and had read the gov links and couldn't find anything.

The reason for worry about leaving them in the house whilst away, is just that although the house is left in a "safe" state when we go out to work, there are TVs, bookcases, which hasn't happened yet but has the potential for a cat to pull on themselves, and leaving them for 4-5 hours whilst at work and coming home to damage, or water pipes bursting etc is less likely than 3 days away.

I liked the idea of the runs a) as that is what they are in at a cattery, and b) there is nothing in there to harm them (of course there would be cat toys and scratchers etc).

Henrietta we can continue to use the cattery, and they are booked in to go. They just don't seem to particularly enjoy the experience so was looking at alternatives.

Could you try a different cattery? Also do they only feed twice a day? I suspect a lot of us feed three times a day at home.

We have a catrun which has a cat door so they can come and go as they please but can't get outside (we're in Australia so it's non-negotiable to me that they don't wander).

Ours is much larger than the one you linked, has a tree in it for them to climb, has hammocks and tubes and they have free access to the house. There's still no way I would leave them alone for that long a time.

They have complete biscuits available to them all day, and they have a pouch of wet food one each in the evenings.

Unfortunately only 2 catteries in the area, and the other one has dogs as well, and I think the howling dogs would finish my two off.

I certainly wouldn't leave them without being checked every day. My girl once had a leg injury while I was away and I wouldn't have wanted her left like that. She is also prone to cystitis, so some needs to keep an eye open for early warning signs otherwise it gets nasty pretty quick.

I'm really lucky as I have a brilliant neighbour who comes in twice a day to feed ours, she makes sure my girl is okay and on one occasion when she was worried she checked her every hour. My male cat regularly visit three neighbours, so they are asked to let my neighbour know if they are concerned. I leave her with our telephone number and the vets are instructed they can do a home visit if they can't load them into a carrier.

The arrangement works really well for both of us as in return I water the whole of their back garden (turned into an allotment), greenhouse and hanging baskets while they are away. We both go away quite a lot, and let each other know in advance in case we clash on dates.