Looking for advice on a situation that's been stressing me out for the past month, with one month left to go.
I'm from out of state on a two-month sit in a sleepy fisherman town. No car, no Uber, no rideshare of any kind available. I asked the homeowner about neighbors or anyone local who could help in an emergency — she said she has no support network here, no neighbors. It's a sleepy vacation town and most houses sit empty.
Before I arrived, the homeowner mentioned there *might* be the option to use her car, and asked if I'd be okay without one. I said yes — but made clear I'd need a real emergency plan for the cats in place no matter what. She agreed.
When I arrived, she reacted as though a car had never been mentioned as a possibility, and there was no emergency plan discussed. When I asked what to do if a cat needed urgent vet care, she said "the vet is just around the corner, you could walk." I took that to mean literally nearby since there are a couple businesses around the corner two doors down, so I thought maybe that works. But when I actually went to see, it's not around the corner. It's a significant distance to carry a cat in a soft carrier with no solid bottom, where the cat shifts around and the whole thing destabilizes. That's hard on anyone's body, and I have some physical limitations that make it an impossible option for me.
I'm watching two cats — a 5-year-old and a 15-year-old with kidney disease. Both are indoor/outdoor. The younger one who came home one evening with a serious neck wound, blood all over his neck. I immediately notified the homeowner, who's in another country, and I looked up all vets since the nearby one was closed. Nothing was open locally. The only option was a vet in the next town over, about 45 minute drive away, and they weren't open until the following day. The homeowner's response was "wait, don't do anything yet" — she wanted more photos to assess, but her wifi was too spotty to receive them. I ended up calling the vet by phone and got advice, researching online, and monitoring the cat closely for a week. She recovered. But I was managing all of that essentially alone and didnt have a way to get him to the vet if I wanted to and her not approving to do so if I could.
Here's the broader context that makes this hard to resolve: the sit was described as fairly low maintenance — the cats go outside, litter box barely used. The reality is I'm cleaning up vomit and feces almost every day. I ran out of cleaning supplies to keep up with it and flagged it to the homeowner — no response. There's no mop, which became a real issue on rainy days with cats tracking in and going on the floor. When I asked about it, again no response. When I asked about a toilet brush because I couldn't identify what was there, I sent a photo — and got a reply that basically said it took half a second to Google this, it's right next to the toilet. So the communication dynamic is: she responds well to pet photos, but when I raise anything about maintaining the house or practical concerns, it either gets ignored or I get a snarky response.
That's why I haven't pushed harder on the emergency plan. By the time the wound and another issue around the house was resolved I was completely spent, and I just didn't have it in me to start a conversation that I wasn't confident would go anywhere. Every time I raise a practical concern it doesn't land well, and I don't have a the energy to spend on conversations that go nowhere. But I also can't sit here for another month with no real plan if something happens to either cat — especially the 15-year-old with kidney disease.
I want to be fair to her — I don't think she's acting in bad faith. I think she genuinely didn't think it through, and some of it is a perspective gap: when you have a car, "the vet is just around the corner" is true. She's not wrong from where she's sitting. But I'm the one here without one, and I need an actual plan for the next month.
**What I'm looking for:**
- Is this situation enough to justify ending the sit early under THS terms? I want to honor the commitment I made, and I would never take that lightly — but I also would never have signed up for a sit like this had I known. This isn't about inconvenience. To me, having no emergency plan for a elderly cat period but one with kidney disease in a rural area with no transportation is a matter of paramount importance.
- If not, how would you approach bringing this back up with a homeowner who tends to minimize and doesn't respond well to practical concerns?
- Are there workarounds I'm not thinking of for rural sits with no transportation?
- How would you handle the next month?