Braininvat,
Hah definitely not a cat expert, but the big thing that I noticed from my trip was that they didn't have much water when I got back. This surprised me since I laid down several extra large bowls of water, though I suspect that they may've tipped over the bowls at some point, then the bowls fixed their orientation. Or maybe they just drank a ton? Or it evaporated? Not sure.
But whatever the case, I'm gonna have to find a way to leave the kittens a large amount of water that they can't tip over or have evaporate next time. May involve some larger pots and pans.
Thankfully their water fountain did have some water left over when I got back, so they were okay even if I'm uncomfortable with how low it got. I was sure to unplug the fountain before going, since I don't know if the motor inside would've taken damage or caused a large problem when the water level got too low and it started sucking up air.
The kittens also ate a lot more food than I thought they would, but I guess dry food can't evaporate or get soaked into the carpet when tipped over, so that wasn't such a big problem.
I tried to keep some curtains open for them since they like to look out. I figured that they'd especially need to be able to see outside given that they were being left alone for a few days; didn't want them to feel all depressed.
'course did the other basics, like cleaning their litter boxes well and unplugging all of the electronics (since they occasionally try to chew on wires). Had to keep the windows closed since kittens like trying to climb on the wire screen, and I'm afraid that they'd tear it and get outside if left unmonitored. Also closed up the toilet seats and such since they do like to hop up on the toilets and can fall in.
I keep doors to rooms that I do projects in closed. I have a lot of little parts like small screws and nuts around, so I'm afraid that the kittens would try to eat those if I let them in those areas.
Oh, and I try to consider where they might fall. Like I have pillows down around the cat tree, and I try to keep sharp-ish corners (like table edges) away from the high places that they like to go up to. Also have some stuff like my shoe rack reinforced now so one cat can't accidentally have it fall over and hurt one of them.
They liked my tie collection too. I had one of those hangers that had a bunch of ties and belts up in the closet, but the kittens saw this as a huge cat toy. One solution would've been to keep the closet door closed, but they really like the closet as a place to hide when I'm out so I try to keep it accessible to them.
Not sure about plastic bags yet. They adore being able to hide in plastic bags - even transparent ones - though I have concerns. But you know the big plastic bags/boxes that are used to wrap collections of bottled water? The cats like those, and since they're relatively rigid, I feel like they're safer than less rigid plastic bags, e.g. normal grocery store bags.
Oh, and funny story: I got more cat food from Amazon.com the other day (
this kind). When the box got here, the kittens attacked it. But it turns out that they weren't after the food inside the box (despite liking it) - they just wanted to get into the box as a place to hide!