Thank you everybody for your input.

>>5022979
>>5022987
>>5023016
>>5023025
>bro don't leave him alone for so long just because you plan to keep him
Please understand that I do want what's best for him, I'm not trying to be selfish here. I've only had him for 3 days (this being the 4th) so I've had very little time to come up with a plan (on top of caring for him, spending a lot of time trying to find his owner, trying to find a sitter for my cat/keeping him chill now that there's a new cat in the house, and trying to get everything ready for this trip). I have no experience with kittens, but the idea of leaving him alone for so long doesn't sit right with me either, which was why I wanted to get some second opinions.

The ideal, of course, would be for his owner to step forward. My original plan was to surrender him to a shelter if no owner came forward--I called a cat-specific shelter within hours of him coming into my house to start the process of surrendering him. However, they *just* took in a fuckton of cats from some hoarder, and the earliest they *might* be able to fit him in is a day or two before the trip, which is cutting it really close (and I'd like to try to avoid burdening them even more if possible).

When I explained the situation, the vet clinic that recommended the shelter to me said they thought the kitten would be better off in an environment they're comfortable in (my house), provided I had a sitter making regular visits and tried to enrich his environment as much as possible. The manager at the shelter agreed--now I'm also a little bit worried that they might have implicitly taken the conversation as "yeah I don't want to surrender the cat anymore". Most places I spoke to said I should avoid surrendering him to animal services if at all possible.

That said, my understanding is the shelter DOES hold the cats for 30 days before offering them for adoption--so I think it's quite likely I could go back and adopt him as soon as I get back.