'Neighbors asked me to look after their pets for 3 weeks. It's now been almost a year.' UPDATED

"Neighbors entrusted me with looking after their pets/house for 3 weeks, it has been almost a year now and they haven't come back. Today their basement flooded, and i have no idea what to do."

In June my neighbors came to my door, i had some experiences with them (they invited us for a BBQ not long after they moved in). They asked me and my wife if we would look after their pets, and their house for the next 3 weeks, as they needed to return to Taiwan as his mother was dying. They even left me $500 dollars for food for their 2 German Shepards, and their cat.

I don't know what happened to them, but they just never came back. I don't know if they ended up in some sort of prison, or decided to just not come home at all. Today i found out their basement had flooded, probably sometime within the last week. Apparently a pipe burst, but the entire basement is completely messed up.

I paid for have the leak fixed, and i spent all of today using my shop vac to drain their basement to the best of my abilities. Between this and one of their dogs needing surgery i have spent several thousand dollars of my own money, and frankly the damage to the basement was pretty awful. I don't have their insurance paperwork, and don't really know if i can even do a claim for them.

On top of this his two giant German Shepards while they are amazingly good boys, it is becoming almost too much for us to handle. Their last name is extremely common, and their Facebook profiles are private. Which gives me very little avenue to tackle this down.

Timeline:

- June 07 - Neighbors asked me if i would look after their pets, and their house while they were handling the death of his mother back in Taiwan. Told me 3 weeks at latest.

- July 1st - Neighbors sent me an email stating they needed some additional time to handle his father's affairs. He apologized and said he would be back by July 15th at latest.

- July 21st - Sent him an email asking what was going on, explained how we were going on vacation in August. Never got a response.

- July 31st - Tried calling him on his cellphone, # he was given to me was no longer in service.

- August 14th - Went on vacation, had my brother look after all 4 dogs, for the next week.

- September 2nd - Emailed him again, no response.

- September 3rd - Tried to reach him and his wife via Facebook using the private message feature.

- September 6th - Ended up moving his 2 dogs, 1 cat into our house as they seemed extremely miserable. I ended up disassembling part of our adjoined fence to allow his dogs to use their outdoor area.

- November 19th - One of his dogs started showing signs of being ill, brought him to the vet turns out he is suffering from a medium severity case of IVDD. He ended up requiring surgery which we paid for.

- January 21st - Sent another email and never got a response.

- Today - When i was bringing his mail in to his house, i noticed it smelled pretty awful and i quickly discovered his basement had about a foot of water in it.

Questions:

- What exactly is my level of responsibility in this. I agreed to look after it for a few weeks/couple of months at the most. It has almost been a year now.

- Is there anything i can do?

Sorry some other points:

- I am assuming they have some sort of auto payment for bills setup, because they still have hydro/cable/internet.

- I am unsure where exactly the husband worked, i know he said he was an engineer, however i cannot find his linked in profile, so i don't know what company.

- Their last name is a very common name (common like Wong), which gives me tons of facebook results.

A few weeks later, OP shared this update on the sitation:

Good news, i followed everyone's advice reached out to the police and the embassy. Explained the situation, and gave them a bunch of information.

Tonight i got a phone call from them, explaining they just decided to stay much much longer and spend time with family/friends. They apparently asked his wife's brother to come and collect the animals and get the key a long time ago back in August, but never followed up on it.

He apologized and said he was sorry, he gave me two options, and asked if i wanted to keep his pets since i have had them for so long, or he will push his step brother to get the animals. Apparently the animals don't really mean anything to him or his wife which i feel is quite sh!tty.

He apparently can no longer access his email, and passed me along a new email address/phone number i can use to contact him. But told me he doesn't have plans to return to Canada anytime soon. I mentioned the water damage, and he just said they can buy a new house or get it fixed when they get back.

He was also quite confused and somewhat annoyed, about the lengths we went to get in touch with him. He didn't understand why we reached out the embassy. He then offered to send me a bunch of money to square away the inconvenience, and that was more or less it.

I feel kind of pissed off at how little he/his wife seem to care about the pets/his house. Anyways me and my wife are going to keep the pets simply because well i don't think ether of us can part with the dogs and his cat at this point.