Couple of cat questions (cat sitting)

[Odesseiron]

Hey all of you cat owners! I have a couple of questions.

My friends went on vacation for a week and I am cat sitting for a few days. They left on Saturday, and filled their bowls with dry food (2 cats) and some wet. They have a water reservoir as well. I was out all day Saturday, and yesterday as well. My friends assured me the cats will be fine til today.

Which they are. I went and checked on them and aside from being a little attention starved (I played around with them for a few minutes, made sure to pet them a bunch) all was good. I changed their litter, fed them each some wet food, filled the water reservoir, and gave them each a heaping scoop of dry food.

So my main question here is, do I need to go every day? My buddy said that I can go once every other day and feed them. Since I did it this morning around 10 AM, the theoretical next time I would do it would be Wednesday at around 4:30 PM. Is that too long? Cats don't strike me as dumb creatures. They know not to overeat or over drink, and adjust after a couple days.

It's not that out of the way to go every single day, but a good 40 minutes each way.

Cat owners, your opinions?

[Qalbert]

if they act up hit em with a water bottle

[Cail]

throw a water bottle at them

edit: fu qal

[Suvhater]

they will be fine. Cats sleep most of their lives anyway.

[zoobernut]

Cats don't necessarily regulate their food they might eat all their food. They don't need a lot of attention but I would recommend checking on them once a day. But then again they might just be fine until Wednesday. I just know our two cats will eat until all food is gone so they need to be fed every day. That and my wife house sits for a lot of different people watching their cats and dogs and she always visits at least once a day for cats.

[Judai]

No animal regulates its food well, my cats would eat the entire bowl in less then a day, but they won't die, they will just be hungry. Some cats will get annoyed if their litter isn't cleaned every day, idk how those cats are but some will go outside the litter if it isn't clean. You can leave a pile of food and plenty of water and they will survive though, since it's just a short time it shouldn't affect their diet or weight much.

[SephYuyX]

Put it outside where real alpha cats belong.

[Colenzo]

If they are really fat cats they can live on their own fat for a couple of weeks at a time without getting sick. But yeah dont worry if they like miss a day of not having food, cats are habitual creatures and if they act like super hungry chances are they're just like "wtf where is my food" and not like dying to eat anyways.

[Lucavi]

I'd check up on em every day just to be safe. If its a mileage issue, just hit your friends up for a few bucks when you get back. Its better to be safe than sorry in this instance. Indoor/outside cats are pretty good with managing their food, but pure indoor cats can be greedy as all hell and tend to plow through their kibble.

[Ddz]

You don't need to go every day. I leave my cat at home all weekend sometimes and she is fine from Friday until Sunday when I get home. Just leave the food bowl as full as you can, and plenty of water. I sometimes leave two dishes of water if I know I will home late on the 2nd or 3rd day.

[Tekki]

The biggest concern for not checking on them will not be their social behaviors, or even their eating habits.. Its going to be that cat box. Some of them can be super picky. I have to clean mine out at least once every 48 hours or they will go outside of it. Poo isnt bad on the carpet, but cat piss on the carpet is the worse... I still havent found a way to get it up 100% without tearing up the carpet.

[Odesseiron]

Thanks for the input everyone. Seeing as how my friends left Saturday morning and gave them 2 bowls of food and a full water reservoir, and I just checked on them today at 11 AM, (about 2 days) they still had about 1/3 of the water left, and some dry food left in the bowls. I'm thinking they will be fine. The litter box wasn't all that bad either. Besides, not my carpet... lol.

[Tekki]

Yaaaa but cat piss in your carpet is about as bad as leaving a milk carton in a car. Its a smell thats really fucking hard to get rid of.

[Cail]

Yaaaa but cat piss in your carpet is about as bad as leaving a milk carton in a car. Its a smell thats really fucking hard to get rid of.

truth. they gonna be pissed if that happens

[Ksandra]

to be realistic, I'd say do w/e they told you to do as they should know their cats (unless you think they are retarded and don't take care of them). If they said every 2 days, then that probably means they change the litter every two days. As well, not ALL cats will eat everything, so since you already have an idea of how much they ate between them leaving and you visiting so that's a good method to keep.

When I left my kitty for the week we got her a self feeder for both food and water, and just had our friend check on her in the middle of the week to make sure she didn't knock anything over lol.

With two cats for sure you have to do some litter cleaning, but every two days shouldn't make them piss on the carpet even with two cats. (I have two now and we go away for the weekend sometimes, and that's fine with no litter changes)

[MaachaQ]

This topic has me thinking about my own cats... We're planning to travel to the US for my sister's wedding this coming summer, and I'm not sure what to do with our cats. My husband's family really dislikes cats and rarely even visit our apartment because of it, and we don't really have any close friends that we'd trust with a key to our apartment to take care of them. We have a food and water dispenser that should cover their needs for the ~1 week that we'll be gone, but I don't know what to do about litter... We already have 2 litter boxes set up (we have 4 cats >.> ), but normally I have to clean the boxes every day to keep up with them. I can probably buy a couple extra plastic litter pans to set up around the place, but I'm still not sure it'll be enough. Any suggestions?

[Pirian]

Hijacking this thread since OP's questions were answered by the owners.

My girlfriends parents are moving and gave my girlfriend their cat. The first 2 years it was raised as an inside cat, so it is litter-box trained, but it has spent the last 5 years outside. Well, the cat has been under our bed for the past 4 days or so. It has come out occasionally, but is afraid to go downstairs (her parents had a 1 story house), and will stand at the door to our bathroom and not go in unless someone else goes in (it's litter box is in the bathroom). It has pooped once in 4 days, and peed maybe 3 times. It is eating just fine, but the stupid thing isn't pooping. I've read that leaving treats down that lead to the litter box will help it, which it did the first time (the only time it has pooped) but hasn't helped since. The cat isn't completely miserable, as it will jump on the bed and allow itself to be petted/sleep with us, but it clearly misses being outside. It will stair out the window and meow for 10-15 minutes at a time, but it is a vocal cat, so I haven't thought too much about it. The girlfriend is afraid to let it outside because she's afraid it won't come back, and it won't leave our room anyways.

There is another cat in the house, and it was kind of funny because the other cat would sit on the outside of our door, and the new cat would sit on the our side of the door, and they would just stair at each other.

But anyways, what should I do about getting the cat to go to the bathroom? Also, what can I do to acclimate the cat to it's new environment? A water bottle can only do so much :\ And trust me, I've tried

[Toxictaru]

The cat knows where the box is, and is probably just panicked. When it feels full enough, it will go. My cat took a 3 day trip from South Carolina to west coast Canada and she never did anything along the way, and took another day or so to actually go. We once switched her litter from the regular sand junk to that wood stuff that breaks down in to sawdust, and she was so freaked out by it that she held it for 4 days before she relented.

I've found that the older the cat, the harder the adjustment is for them. When my dad died, we had to move his cat (well it was my brothers, but stayed with my dad) across Canada, and he did not enjoy it very much. Of course, he was 11-12 and very set in his ways, but eventually they do adjust. Cats also tend to have a homing sense, so as long as the cat is aware that its food is at your place, it will come back.

Your biggest problem with adjustment right now is that it is trying to adjust to not only a new home, but also being around another cat.

As for the original topic, over the holiday, my wife and I spent a couple of days at my moms place. We left her a huge bowl of food and 2 big bowls of water. We left on the 24th and came back on the 27th, and she hadn't eaten much at all, and we ended up just leaving the bowl there for a couple of extra days so we didn't have to feed her. It depends on the cat, they can either be pigs or ration it, and they tend to stick to that routine.

[Ratatapa]

My Cat is pretty young but never had problem of beeing outside (exept when i went lazy once and didnt wash his litter, was mostly to say YO wash this)

I usually full his food bowl and he takes the full day to eat it (he eats when he's hungry)

My familly tells me that a cat can go 2-3 days without eating (can't confirm but i don't wanna test it)

Also since i'm a scaredy cat myself. I left for Xmas on Friday and came back monday morning gave him 1 giant bowl of water and 2 bowl of food.

Came back he had eaten both bowls and he also didnt eat the rest of the week (guess he was full)

Started to eat back Dec 31th

Dunno if that will help but at least i gave soome info

[Amelya]

If your buddy says they will be fine I would just do as he suggested and go every other day. The owner should be pretty aware of his own cats eating / litter box habits.