Can we leave the cat for the weekend?

[LookAtTheFlowersKerry]

We're going away in a few weeks. Last time we had my brother in twice a day and he cocked up the alarm code and it was all a bit of a drama, so he's loathe to do it again.

We're away from Friday am to Sunday pm.

I'm thinking one of two options.

1. leave her shut in (no cat flap) with both kitchen sinks full of water, a big bowl of dry food and a covered litter tray.

2. leave her out with a bucket of water and some dry food up on the garden table. She's a hunter and eats what she kills.

Obviously option 4 is finding someone to come in, and we could still do that.

She's not a people cat, she only comes near us when she wants food or to go out. So she won't miss us and doesn't need company. She goes out all night and most of the day.

I'm leaning towards leaving her out but would like opinions.

I usually pay a cat sitter to come in twice a day when I'm away. I also lock the cat flap as I'd be worried something might happen to one of them and the cat sitter would just assume they were playing outside and not look for them. When it's over a week they do tend to punish me by peeing on the bed or something like that! But for peace of mind I think it's worth it. They always forgive me as soon as I'm home. In your circumstances please leave the food inside with the cat. The litter tray will be fine for 48 hours. But if you can get someone to look in on them, then I would definitely advise it!

You can get cat flaps put into walls too.

Automatic cat feeder and someone to empty the litter tray and check on her.

Don't leave her locked out - what if she gets injured or in a fight?

I wouldn't leave your cat unattended. I did that once - went away for two nights thinking she'd be fine. She was so distressed she'd clawed the wallpaper. She probably thought I wasn't coming back.

Nearly three full days is a bit risky. She could knock her water bowl over, she could have an upset stomach, she could get her claws tangled in something. Could your DB have her in his house? Could you pay a DN to catsit? Or could you disable your alarm for that weekend and get someone to check in on her?

you need to get someone in to check on her in my opinion. Id leave a cat overnight, but not for a whole weekend without someone putting food down and changing the tray

I fairly regularly leave our cat for this long with a litter tray and timer feeder. She's an indoor cat anyway and not that fussed about human company. We've never had a problem with the litter tray - we use the silica crystal litter which deals well with cat pee smells and drys out any poo.

We always had a house sitter, but we were lucky in that we had young staff working in our business who were only too happy to have a house to themselves in exchange for feeding & fussing the cats.

Do you know any older teens/young 20's living at home?

Apols for crashing but psst OP - you can get a cat-flap put in a wall (also owner of multiple bi-folds)

Ooh that's something I hadn't thought of. We could put one in the back wall of the garage, and one in the door from the house. That could work.

I used to leave ours for this long no problem (though we did have a cat flap) and a timed feeder was essential. Also, though they could get out they preferred a litter tray so I bought a huge, what I think was a seed tray(?) from the garden centre to use as the litter tray as it was about four times the size of normal trays. Worked really well.

We have two litter trays.

Before we moved house we would go away for the weekend and leave the 2 cats in doors. I knew they were save in doors and had access to plenty of food and water