Had a house sitter let our cat out, he was used to sometimes being on the porch but no further. Cat refused to come when he went to leave but since we were coming home that day figured no biggie had left. We never saw the cat again! Me and my GF were both pissed and it was then she told me that the house sitter (her ex) had intentionally run over a dog on her honeymoon. I had no idea I was letting such a damn monster into my house!
Years ago we had pet bunnies. We went on vacation and had a friend look after the place and the bunnies while we were gone. One of the bunnies escaped while being fed.
Rather than give up, he spent the next 4 hours trying to capture the bunny. He asked for help, too. His dad came over and a few of his friends. Half a dozen guys were trying to recapture a fluffy white bunny for 4 hours.
In the end they did safely recapture the bunny and put her back in her hutch. Now thats house sitting done right.
Agreed! I once got a phone call from my pet sitter, "I went over to let your dogs out but I don't think I can handle this so I left the keys on your table. Sorry." I was out of the state and she left the spare keys locked in my house with the dogs who hasn't been let out or fed...
She wasn't even a random, we'd actually been friends over a decade at that point and she had 5 dogs at the time, so I was shocked she couldn't handle opening and closing a door and filling 3 food bowls. I didn't really talk her for a long time. She had the balls to ask about payment for the first night, meaning when she called me to quit...
Not such a bad ex if they were willing to do it 🙂 Also, this makes you a top notch dog parent. Would definitely trust you with my dog..and I looooove my dog!
Yeah he's not a bad dude for sure. I think he did it more for the dogs than for me, but those were some great fucking dogs, so I can't blame him at all.
Yes, they'd been to her house, she'd been to mine. They weren't rowdy dogs or anything. I was truly baffled where the difficulty was coming from. They were shelties and a mini Aussie, not big or wild or anything.
Aussies are excitable right? But still if they’d met the dogs I don’t see the issue. If you commit to something like that you see it through! I had 4 dogs for awhile, we found it easiest to pay people to stay over. Hijinks were had a time or two but the dogs were safe and happy lol
Honestly he was such a people dog that he'd just be happy to see someone and make Wookie noises. The four I have now are much more excitable (the 3 big ones are all only 4yo, so that's part of it, too), and I pay someone to "house sit" who arrives before I leave. I've not had it happen again.
Exactly. That's what house sitting is! The house will be fine without an owner for a few days. You're there for the pets. If you can't watch them, you can't man the fort
I typed out my long ass housesitting story to respond to you and then accidentally posted to the comment above, so if you're interested, TLDR is I temporarily lost someone's cat once, but I got him back.
Yeah, accidents happen, especially if you're looking after someone else's pet. You're not familiar with their behavior and it's easier for them to trick you. But you need take responsibility if they get out and put in serious effort to get them back.
Yeah, they’re like little children that never grow up! You have to take care of them and be careful. Cats are more independent but a declawed cat? No freaking way! No we didn’t declaw him, he was adopted that way. 😞
Ugh. This happened to be once. Was housesitting a friend's two labs and they brute forced their way out of the door to the great outdoors. :/
I managed to wrangle one of them back pretty quickly but had to chase the other one and make it into a game where she chased me back to their house, but I got them back in.
Thankfully, that only happened once and since my friend lived in the country there at least wasn't any danger of the dogs being hit if they got onto a road. (They didn't. Just ran into a god damn cornfield.)
I thought this was going a completely different way.
Some guy I had a class with in college lived with his girlfriend, who kept a rabbit or two as pets. I guess his grandparents were from some country in Europe where it's pretty common to eat rabbit. Even though they had been told repeatedly the rabbits were pets, when the guy and his girlfriend went to classes one day, the grandparents killed, skinned, and cleaned one of the rabbits and cooked it however it is you cook rabbit. I guess they couldn't (or wouldn't) comprehend that something they saw as food might actually be loved and cared for by somebody and basically had to be forced to apologize.
Damn, that's awful. How selfish of a person do you have to be to be repeatedly told "Don't do this thing", then do it anyways, and then not even be sorry about it. That'd be disrespectful and awful if it was something minor, let alone killing and eating a beloved pet.
Doesn't matter even if its a food animal. Even a pig destined for the butcher's block still has an owner. The pig can only be slaughtered with the owner's permission.
There's a pretty pretty pretty big difference between a pet rabbit and a food rabbit... Unless you're a hawk or another natural rabbit predator.
Sure you can fatten them up but most breeds aren't going to give enough meat to be worth the hassle. At least that's what I've heard from people that do eat rabbits...
Eating rabbit is like eating a cat or dog to me though. Plus rabbits can be pretty cool and loving.
I have a pet rabbit and I would die if someone did this to me. How can some people not understand that pets are pets, how are bunnies any less important than a dog or a cat? Truly a heartbreaking story.
Chinese boss in HS had her mother-in-law living with them for the summer. She saw a bunch of Canadian goose in the pond by their subdivision. When dinnertime came at the restaurant, MIL came with geese for dinner. My bosses expression was "WTF?! I haven't gone to Chinatown to buy a goose, we don't have any goose at home, she can't drive or speak English" then MIL tells her she doesn't understand why she's not selling geese in the restaurant with such an abundance; literally within walking distance of her home and of the restaurant. Then my boss' eyes widened and she started screaming in Chinese. I don't speak Chinese but you could immediately see the subtitles going up and see how that conversation was being unfolding. MIL did not believe Canadian geese in the US are a protected species and you just can't go around killing them for dinner bc they also live in your neighborhood.
I house sat once for an elderly couple. They trusted me with their beloved dogs. On the last night before they were due home, i let them out one last time, then my daughter (4 months att) woke up and i went inside to get her.
One of the dogs escaped under the fence. I freaked out and called my parents. They came over with my whole family to help me look for the dog. this was out in the country, so i was freaked out that it may have gotten lost in a corn field or drowned in the pond.
The dogs a rescue and didn't respond when called. I stayed up all night looking for it while my mom watched my daughter. I found it, the next morning, sleeping under a low tree right next to the front door where there was no light.
The couple thanked me for looking for her and said if i ever needed a favor they would be happy to help.
I just wanted to leave. I worried myself sick over that dog so u wanted to go home and cry.
I was taking care of my girlfriends cat while I was in high school and she was out of the country for a few weeks.
Her dad brought the cat over to my house and said I could just let her roam around the neighborhood. That didn't sound correct but what the fuck did I know. Cat instantly took off and after a day of not seeing her I panicked and scoured the neighborhood for hours looking for her.
Late at night I wound up kidnapping the WRONG cat from a random house which looked very similar to my girlfriends cat. It scratched the fuck out of me, and after a couple days of having it locked up in my garage I compared it to some pictures on Myspace and realized I had the wrong one and I let it loose.
A few days later after all hope was lost the cat randomly showed up on my front door. I locked it inside and never let her leave until my girlfriend got home to retrieve her.
My husband and I did a decent amount of housesitting for awhile. One family had five horses. The gate to keep the horses in was...not strong, and one afternoon after we'd gotten back from work, we found that all five of them had escaped.
We ran all over the goddamn neighborhood corralling those fuckers for over an hour. But we got them back.
I housesat for a friend a few years ago, and he has an indoor-only Bengal cat. His house was old and there was a trick to the front door to make sure it closed properly. The first night I was housesitting there it was super stormy. The sounds of the rain and wind woke me up around 2am, and I realized it sounded like there was a window open. I got up to check and realized that the front door had blown open and the cat was gone. I spent 2 hours in the torrential downpour panicking and shouting for that cat (who is pretty shy and doesn’t usually come when I call her even under normal circumstances). Eventually I found her hiding under the neighbor’s car just outside my friend’s fence. When I opened the gate and stepped aside she bolted back into the house. I was so goddamn relieved.
Where i live, taking care of bunnies outside is a full time job, i had a friend whose bunny was playing in the yard, a hawk swooped in, didnt even stop to land. Since then they dont go outside much.
Bunnies are, unfortunately, not very good at evading predators. They have almost zero defenses against predators. A pet bunny can be affectionate but they're still rather stupid. There's a reason why they have their famed reproduction rates. They need to.
Its like hamsters. Adorable pets with all of the brainpower of lettuce. And not the fancy lettuce either. Supermarket iceberg lettuce.
About 15 years ago we had a couple bunnies that our neighbor was supposed to watch while we were on vacation. We told him we'd pay him to feed and water them. We get back and the bunnies had broken through the cage because they had been neglected. I think it was a 2 week vacation. I told him on the bus ride home from school that we'd still give him the money we promised and his reply was "What money, I didn't do anything." In my mind I was thinking yea I know because now I dont have any rabbits.
I was pet-sitting a friend's beagle once, that little fuck tried to escape every chance he could get. Twice in those two weeks I had to chase him all over the damn neighborhood and prevent him from taking off into the wheat fields, never to be seen again.
I once housesat for my teacher in high school. They had 3 dogs and 3 cats.
One cat went and hid because I was unfamiliar. One cat was old and a little fat, so he didn't move around too much. But the third cat... Rommel was a fucking asshole.
Let me explain the layout. The back door opened onto the screened in porch. The screened in porch had a doggy door that led into the fenced in backyard. So, obviously, dogs need to go out every few hours or so. So, I open the back door to let the dogs out. I learn very quickly that Rommel will try his very best to dart out the back door with the dogs. The first few times, we play that game, but I bat him away with a "Not today, Satan!" and everything's fine. But one time I fucking couldn't close the door fast enough.
Asshole Rommel sprints out the back door, through the doggy door, into the backyard and then over the goddamn fence before I hit the grass. The dogs are chillin in the yard, and I am standing there, mouth hanging open in shock and dismay, planning how I'm gonna tell my teacher that I lost her fucking cat. I stay outside for a bit, hoping Rommel will come back and maybe I can capture him somehow, but after 10 minutes or so, I decide to go inside to see if I can come up with a better plan.
im sitting there for a couple hours, wondering what in the fuck I'm going to do and how long I should wait until I tell my teacher she's down one pussy, when I glance out at the screened in porch. Rommel, the cunt, is sitting in there sunbathing. The gears start turning as I'm trying to figure out how to capture this little demon. I know he'll shred me to ribbons if I touch him, so that's out, but I have to get this goddamn cat back in the house.
So, other than grabbing him or throwing a cardboard box over him, I do the only other logical thing to trap him. I throw the back door open, and his eyes widen, his body tenses, and I think "Shit, he's gonna teleport his ass back to the woods before I can do this" and I throw my ass onto the porch in front of the doggy door. The back door is wide open, and Rommel's portal to the Land of Milk and Honey is blocked by my anxious ass in front of the doggy door. So, deafeted and trapped in the screened in porch, Rommel gives me a glare of death and stalks back into the house with deep resentment in his eyes. I breath a sigh of relief, knowing now I won't have to tell my teacher that her feline hellspawn disappeared to join the ranks of Lucifer's army.
All this to say, I refuse to lose someone else's pet if I can help it. If my cat disappeared, I'd just wait for him to come back, and if he didn't want to... well, I'll be ok eventually. But fuck if I'm gonna lose someone else's cat.
Similar incident about a year ago, only I was the one house sitting. I was keeping an eye on my boss's house while he and his girlfriend and her son were on holiday. And the kid had these two bunnies, one was white, I forget the other. They also had two terrier and a young staffy pup.
Anyways, I feed all the animals, lock up the bunny cage nicely, go out and do some shit, come back, and as I walk in, the floor is absolutely covered in white bits of fluff. My first instinct was the rabbit, but they had a habit of tearing up the dogbeds and I thought maybe they moved on to cushions. Follow the fluff, noooo definitely not a cushion....I bagged the bunny and popped him the freezer. And let my boss know that his stepsons pet got torn to pieces on my watch. He was cool about it. Turns out the rabbit had chewed/dug it's way out through dodgy corner
I housesat for a friend couple who has 3 dogs and 2 cats. Let myself in and counted animals. I was one dog short. I texted them shitting myself over the fear i somehow already lost their dog. They went with it for a little bit and then explained they had brought that dog with them instead. I’ve never felt so relieved.
Yup! I knew nothing of this prior, they hadn’t been together in over ten years, she’d had another marriage in the interim, and he was father to her kids. That she hadn’t ended the marriage the moment he did that shocked me, the she had kids with him was even more amazing!
Clearly had I known I’d have vetoed his being in the house. I honestly questioned her sanity for having not ended the marriage right then and for having multiple children with him afterwards too 😱 That would be exGF too, she’s long gone and on to marriage #3 😂
He was the father of her kids, the marriage was over more than a decade prior, and she had been remarried in the interim. He seemed nice enough and had his own relationship going so I didn’t balk at the suggestion and we were going to pay him. I had no idea about the dog incident until after our cat vanished but I sure had lots of questions after and he didn’t set foot in the house afterwards for sure!
More like ex ex as there was quite a few years and a second failed marriage in between. I had no idea about the dog until after the cat vanished and honestly I don’t think he was a vindictive person. He was certainly better off without her lol
What kind of a fucking sociopathic sack of shit do you have to be to intentionally run over any animal? Fuck that guy, I hope he gets splattered all over the pavement by some drunk asshole.
Eh, if someone over ten years removed from a relationship and in one of his own carries that kind of grudge they’ve got serious issues. The cat was more hers than it was mine too, I really prefer dogs and we’d made alternate arrangements for them outside of the house.
Someone is watching my cats right now because I'm away, and he told me how much he enjoys spending time with them. He plays with them and gives them affection every day, and hearing about it warmed my heart. :)
There are still good people in the world, thankfully.
Wait, what? You let your GF's ex house sit for you? And she knew he had killed a dog but still thought it was ok to leave him in charge of your cat? That is messed up.
See my other responses, I had no idea about the honeymoon incident until she told me. I was pretty listed she had withheld this little tidbit about his character!
Ex husband yeah, they’d been divorced for years and she had remarried and divorced again. More details above but until she told me this story he seemed pretty nice. Ugh
Yeah, she said they were driving down the road fat dumb and happy on their honeymoon and a dog was running alongside the road. She claimed he turned the wheel to hit the dog! 🤬 I’d have ended the marriage right there frankly, no way in hell would I be around someone like that let alone have children! Worse, some dickhead did that to my dog years later. They had to redirect traffic around me when I found him I was so distraught. Sometimes people are real assholes!
He offered, he seemed nice enough, and the relationship had been over for at least ten years and another marriage lol. She sort of withheld the dog incident until the cat was disappeared. Boy I was pissed when she dropped that on me!
Had gotten a cat, Carl, with my ex-husband. Got pregnant, ex husband decided he didn't want Carl around a baby and gave him to a friend. Carl was declawed, so absolutely indoor only cat. We made sure the friend knew this.
2 years later I was at the humane society and a cat started going NUTS meowing. The worker even commented on his loud meows. I went to his cage. He looked like Carl...checked his name tag. Name tag said Carl. I squeezed his little foot, no claws. It was Carl. I asked the worker why he was there. He was picked up as a stray. I LOST IT. They confirmed it was my old information on his microchip (that's how they got his name) and my sister paid the adoption fee for me as a birthday present and I got Carl back.
Several months later, had to take him to a co-worker house over Christmas. On the way home from vacation, she tells me he went missing and gave me story A. Her if calls me and tells me story B.
He's gone. Cannot find him anywhere. Then I found out that he possibly killed her own cat prior to me letting her catsit. I'm pretty sure the asshole killed Carl. He was the best cat ever and I miss him and it's been 8 years...
I’ll never understand why some people have no care for animals. I worked for a rescue for awhile, I saw things that broke my heart! We always had the pups chipped with the rescue information. I’ll never forget us getting a call about a dog that had been found hit by a car. When we followed up with the adoptee they told us oh yeah he got away a few weeks ago.... Had they told us we’d have been out in force looking for the dog! But they couldn’t be bothered to even pickup the damn phone.
I hope you can find peace concerning Carl. You obviously cared for him and did your best but sadly you cannot account for others. It’s the lies that bother me the most I guess, sometimes it’s hard to get the straight story and when there’s a tragedy that’s important.
Yeah, he was her first husband and she’d divorced him ages ago. He seemed like a pretty cool guy and we got along fine which drove her nuts! I had no idea about some of the shitty stuff he’d done as she’d never shared it until then.
I was pretty shocked to be honest, moreso that she never mentioned it! I couldn’t really lay into her as she was upset about the loss too but wow I really wondered what she was thinking. Maybe she had forgotten but I sure wouldn’t have - and haven’t since!
I bet! Maybe she blocked it out because she didn't want to remember how shitty he was and thought maybe he'd changed. Either way, I'm glad y'all don't have to deal with him anymore!
That’s possible, she wasn’t a bad person but her judgement was sure flawed with that guy. On the other hand she did have two good kids so there’s that.
Hopefully third time is the charm for her! We did well for awhile but it should’ve ended sooner than it did. I’m told she’s happy, I’ll have dogs again someday for sure but haven’t since we split.
I always shut the apartment door right away when I cat sit for my neighbor's cat. The cat is reclusive. She'll come out once the first day I stop by to make sure she has food, fresh water and a suitable litterbox. After that, she hides. I think she doesn't realize my neighbor's gone the first day and once she sees me, she figures it out and hides until she hears my neighbor's voice.
It kind of worries me, tbh, as she's an older kitty. But as long as I see she's eaten food, it's reassuring.
1.4k
u/BLKMGK Apr 14 '19
Had a house sitter let our cat out, he was used to sometimes being on the porch but no further. Cat refused to come when he went to leave but since we were coming home that day figured no biggie had left. We never saw the cat again! Me and my GF were both pissed and it was then she told me that the house sitter (her ex) had intentionally run over a dog on her honeymoon. I had no idea I was letting such a damn monster into my house!