What do they do when I'm not there?

Based on my last cat, sleep. Got curious enough to set up a webcam once on his favourite perch (the sunny window) he spent less than 10 minutes away from the window, which lines up with pooping, drinking and staring at his bowl for 5 minutes waiting for the dry food to turn in to wet food. Otherwise he only shifted to catch more sun as the angle changed during the day.

My girlfriend at the time estimated that if we had recorded motion rather than continuous the video would have been about as long as he actually spent away from the window, an ideal sun position timelapse if you will.

He was a ginger though so that's likely the most creative he could get.

And before its asked, the other reason I recorded that webcam rather than watched the stream live is this was back in the days of dial-up and all my photos of George are on dusty old back ups I only access once a year or so check they are working/replace them and I don't really have the time to go hunting so I am going to be guilty of tax evasion here.

Not a cat but I saw some videos of people strapping cameras to their dogs to see what they do when they're alone and most of them would just sit at the window staring outside waiting for their person to come home 😭

And then you get home and realize you don't even have a cat so you make a MISSING CAT poster and staple it to the light pole outside and then a few hours later someone literally just brings you a cat as long as you're willing to lie and say it's yours so you decide to break the rules just this once so you can have a free cat but then you realize you don't have any food for supplies for it and since it's 3:00 a.m. that means the only place to get those things is the gas station over in Winston that doesn't even carry litter boxes or cat collars.