WIBTA if I told my neighbor I can't watch her cat next month after she killed half my plants while I was away?
My neighbor Diane and I have had a good arrangement for about two years. She travels for work pretty regularly, I work from home, so whenever she's gone I stop by to feed her cat and check on things. She's done the same for me a few times when I've been away, watering my plants and grabbing my mail.
It's been genuinely mutual and I liked it that way.
In March I went to visit my family for ten days. Before I left I walked Diane through everything. I have about fifteen plants, a mix of stuff, some of them are pretty particular about watering. I left written instructions with each plant labeled, how much water, how often, which ones needed more attention. I even sent her a photo of the list in case she lost the paper.
I came home to find that roughly half of them were dead or dying. The soil in most of them was completely dry, like they hadn't been watered at all for the full ten days. A fiddle leaf fig I had been growing for three years was gone. A few others I've managed to save but they're still not right.
When I mentioned it to Diane she said she was sorry, that she had a hectic couple of weeks and lost track. She seemed genuinely bad about it, which made it hard to be as angry as I wanted to be.
The thing is she's already asked me to watch Mr. Whiskers again next month, she has a conference for five days. Normally I would just say yes. But I'm sitting here looking at the empty spot where my fiddle leaf used to be and I don't feel like doing her any favors right now.
I'm not trying to punish her and I know a cat and some plants aren't really equivalent. But WIBTA if I just said I'm not available this time?