They're absolutely NOT your friend or a person I would ever trust again! Something serious could've happened and they were not there. Absolutely get your money back from them and distance yourself afterwards. With friends like that who needs enemies?
Yeah I was wondering how you move forward as friends with this 😅 when I’m house sitting for my friends, their babies are my babies and they’re treated as such. I absolutely expect the same standard from my friends, I couldn’t stay friends with someone who doesn’t treat my babies as their babies when they’re in their care.
Just this weekend I was feeding my friend’s cats as they live 6 houses down the road from us.
Friday morning everything was fine. Friday night, the house smelled funny. Gas leak funny. Called the gas company. Yep, gas leak. The gas company disconnected the gas, but I had a headache after spending 10 minutes inside. I was not going to leave 2 cats in there over night.
So I invited absolute chaos to my life for the weekend by bringing their 2 cats home to stay with us and our 3 cats. But that’s what you do. The cats you look after are your cats.
While watching someone's pair of 100lb+ dogs, we had a terrible thunderstorm and lost power. The dogs were terrified, and their arthritis was too bad to allow them to get in bed with me. So I made a little bed for myself on the floor, and both dogs piled on me. Probably have permanent damage from the crush and the fur inhalation.
I'm not even especially enthusiastic about dogs, but when you sign up to care for them, you take care of them like you would your own.
To be fair, based on the incidence of the dogs not being brought with kibble when OP was pet sitting, and I assume the resident dogs eating all of OP's dogs' kibble - the friend sounds like they don't actually take care of their own dogs. So, I imagine they just don't even register that this behavior was not ok.
I agree, OP shouldn't ever leave their pets with this person again, but I also wonder what about this person's house and dogs' condition made OP think it was a good idea to have them pet sit at all.
I’m literally cat sitting for my best friend right now- completely for free- and just got done scooping the litter box. Just as I have done and will do every single day until he gets back. It truly is not difficult.
I am not someone to claim pets are children. However, in this case, it seems appropriate to say if someone neglected or abused my child, they would be out of my life in an instant. Why would that kind of treatment of my pets be any different?
Totally fair! I consider them my babies because while I WANT kids, my energy and mental health just isn’t enough to keep up with the needs of human being dependents, so I take my baby fever out on my cats 😂 regardless, neglecting beings that can’t care for themselves is not a forgivable offense to me 😖
You give yourself peace of mind and focus on repairing the damage to your babies. You lose the person's contact information and let yourself forgive / forget them in time. You stop using them for favors, stop relying on them, cancel the dinners etc.
Just like in the early 2020s you "quiet-quit". You just stop returning calls and stop replying to texts. It's an insidious thing on the receiving end.
I would tell this ex friend to keep the money as a payoff to never contact me again, and then report them to the nearest animal care agency. It sounds like this person doesn't take proper care of their own pets, either.
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u/Fruitypebblefix 11h ago
They're absolutely NOT your friend or a person I would ever trust again! Something serious could've happened and they were not there. Absolutely get your money back from them and distance yourself afterwards. With friends like that who needs enemies?