Advice

Hii everyone, I was wondering if I could get some thoughts on my situation.

I have been babysitting this family (2 kids, now 4 and 6) for about two years now, and we are on good terms as I come often and they trust me with their kids.

I am now currently house/cat sitting for this family, they have been on vacation for one week and are returning for another. All they asked me is to feed and play with the cat so that he does not get too lonely and essentially just live in the house for the time period that they are gone. I know the cat decently well, I have interacted with him several times while babysitting this family’s kids and have been watching him for about a week now.

About two hours ago, I was washing dishes and I left my laptop unattended and opened on the couch. I realized at one point that the cat was chewing on the corners of my laptop and shooed him away, but at this point he had already chewed through my screen protector and cracked the screen on one corner, and just damaged the other corner. I was upset, as he had damaged my computer, but the computer worked fine and didn’t seem to be damaged so I didn’t think anything of it and was grateful the computer was fine. 45 mins later as I was doing some schoolwork, the computer screen slowly started showing weird lines and slowly but surely the screen broke and faded to this weird grey color. The screen is now broken and I cannot use it whatsoever. I am a 22 year old in teachers college, and I need my computer on a daily basis to do schoolwork, let alone that right now is an incredibly busy period at school.

The family said they would pay me $500 (which is on the lower side tbh) for the two week period, and it’s looking like it’s going to cost about $300 to fix the screen. I am incredibly devastated and frustrated, as this small crack in the corner of my computer’s screen has broken it completely, and it wasn’t exactly my fault.

I am wondering if I should tell the family/ask them to pay? I guess it is kind of my fault cause I should have been watching the cat at all times but I was just in the other room washing dishes and I don’t think it’s realistic to be watching him 24/7. I do not want to burn any bridges with this family as they are a source of income for me, but this leaves me with $200 left for two weeks of work and being far away from home and I feel very disappointed about this whole situation. I am not totally expecting them to pay to fix my computer, but it is their cat and they did not warn me about this whatsoever.

Any advice about the situation would be really helpful, I feel really defeated about this because I am a full time student that really does not have that much money to begin with lol. Thanks in advance