I tried. I really tried.

My folks went on vacation this past weekend, and I agreed to cat-sit for their very large, very moody Siamese. Because they live about 45 minutes away, this meant that the cat would come to my house, and I'd look after him until they got back - somewhere around a 1.5 week, but possibly longer. Their timeline for this trip is fluid.

So, J and I went on Sunday and picked up the cat and brought him to the new bungalow. Those last three words are key. See, I've done this cat-sitting thing before for them, but I was in my old house - with 3 bedrooms and more than twice the square footage. I gave the cat the front bedroom all for himself. It takes this cat about a week of shunning you (sometimes forcefully, with spitting and warning growls and lashing out at you with a - thankfully - clawless front paw) to decide he's lonely enough for your companionship to give up the fight and behave at least somewhat normally. In the old house, I could wait out that week by just leaving him be in the front room until he eventually sought me out.

But the new house is a whole new ballgame. In order to keep my cat from terrorizing the demon houseguest cat, we have to keep them separated. My cat gets the front of the house, where she usually hangs out anyway, and demon houseguest gets the bedroom and bathroom. THE bedroom and bathroom - there are no "spares" in this house. That means that we're sleeping in the same room he is. And this is where this arrangement becomes a problem.

The cat is miserable and scared, and he keeps us up all night with intermittent howls, the occasional jump on the bed which ends with one or both of us being startled awake and him hissing and jumping back down, puking (that was night 2), and (starting last night) banging on the door somehow. We don't know if he's using his paw to try and jimmy the bedroom door open or if he's headbutting it, but he did it all night long and it woke us every time. On top of that, I got up with a flashlight to see what he was doing and saw him jet under the bed and when I kneeled down to see him and try to figure out what was up and maybe console him, he growled at me in what can only be described as a threatening and somewhat terrifying manner.

Well, I can't take it anymore. We've barely slept the last three nights, and the situation isn't getting the least bit better, and there's really no other arrangement considering our house and his personality, so I'm going to have to take him back home and just make the trek down there to feed and check on him every other day. There's just no other option. It's just not working out.

I thought about whether to tell my folks that I'm changing the arrangement, but I decided that if I tell them, they'll decide that the new arrangement is too much of an inconvenience for me and they'll cut their trip short. I don't want them to do that because they were much delayed in even making this trip, so I want them to enjoy themselves and not be worried about me or him. I'll tell them when they're on their way back, and we'll work something else out for future trips.

I don't look forward to trying to wrangle this cat back into his crate when I get home. I haven't even been able to touch him since we picked him up on Sunday. But if I can get through that part, the rest will be easy. And maybe tonight we can ALL sleep!