Leaving cats alone for several days

So here is my situation... I have one cat. He’s about 5 now and I’ve had him since he was a kitten. We’re really close since we’ve lived alone together for those 5 years. My boyfriend lives about an hour away from me. We’ve been doing this for a while and because I live in the more boring city, I tend to travel to his place most of the time and stay over on the weekends. I think we’re planning to move in together once our leases are up, so this is a temporary issue...

Now, my cat is kind of a bad cat. He doesn’t really like new people and can be insanely annoying in the mornings when he wants food. I typically wake up pretty early so my cat has adapted to my schedule just fine. However, my boyfriend likes his sleep, so any time he’s stayed over my cat has annoyed the crap out of him.

Anyway, my boyfriend also has two cats and I’ve had the idea sometimes of bringing my cat with me for the weekend since I feel bad leaving him alone. I’ve done this maybe 3 times now and I think it’s pretty clear that I’m the only one who is comforted by this situation. My cat doesn’t like travel, my boyfriend and his cats don’t really like my cat being there, and I think my cat is uncomfortable at my boyfriend’s place (he acts fine but I’ve found once we get back home he sleeps a lot more than usual). Now obviously if we move in together down the road, we’ll have time for everyone to adapt to a new space and a new cat rather than these sporadic two-day visits that probably do more harm than good.

So I guess my question is, because I feel so guilty leaving my cat alone for two nights every week, does my cat really get sad being alone? I’ll come back at some point in the weekend usually to make sure he’s got food and the litter is ok, but I don’t stay very long. But even if I can’t, my apartment complex offers a service where they’ll check on his food and whatnot while I’m gone. It just seems like he’s been clingy lately, but there haven’t been any behavioral issues (no like pooping outside the litter box or anything) that would lead me to believe he’s that affected by my absence.

submitted by /u/urrobotfriend
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/co6bul/leaving_cats_alone_for_several_days/