@Alderson Tbh I think it was a bit of a risk for you to confirm a sitter for your home & pets before you had confirmed your own travel plans- in this case a sit for yourself!
Personally, as a sitter, I would not confirm a sit before the hosts own plans are confirmed. You now risk cancelling a sitter for a non emergency reason which is unfair to the sitter and against THS t&c.
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I guess this is true but if someone has applied to sit for us at ours and we have 4 months to find a sit for ourselves - that may be OK - on our recent dates we accepted a sit but had no sitter - so are using friends!
Yikes! I’m so sorry you’re in this situation! It makes me sad to hear of other sitters pulling nonsense like this.
Given the urgency, I agree with @TracyW 's suggestion:
It would take a little more effort. You may need to hire a cleaner between sitters and/or enlist help from a friend. But a jigsaw arrangement might be the solution!
Just be sure to create separate listings for each shorter-term sit (e.g. May 19-June 7 & June 8-July 1, or break them into even shorter date ranges) because these will trigger alerts for sitters searching for these date criteria.
Similarly, you might want to actively reach out to / invite any sitters who have favorited your listing, especially if they’ve favorited recently. You might find that someone is available for some (maybe a majority) of your dates.
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If you mean the THS-calendar, then it really isn’t working well for sitters, and I believe most don’t use it in an active way. So no, you can probably not assume a sitter is available by viewing the THS-calendar.
Even if a sitter is available, it would be hit or miss of they are interested in a sit in a random location. But ofc - you can be lucky.
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Just an update: the third sitter who dropped out after confirmation has now come back and said they can do the sit after all. But I’m feeling red flags. Thankfully, I’ve also had two other applicants so three interested parties. Feeling much more confident that I’m going to have something confirmed (again) by the end of the day. I also sorted out my Plan B in the form of a paid cat sitter with whom I’ve done all the paperwork just in case. I’d rather have a house sitter simply because 6 weeks with just drop-in visits would be a bit lonely for the cats, but at least, in an emergency, I do have that option in place.
Thanks for all the help and advice.
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Thanks for popping back with an update @MamaSarah 
fingers crossed you’ve got something confirmed ASAP!
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