I hate emoticons, but this here is a perfect example of why I feel emoticons are a necessary evil.
A simple 
at the end of that text would have put the OP’s mind at ease.
Or a :eek: to indicate her doom-dread was appropriate.
I get that feeling anytime I was toodling along doing what I thought was OK and then caught myself up short realizing that maybe it was totally wrong, maybe someone took offense to something I said, blah, blah, blah. I definitely get that cold “doom” feeling in my stomach and have to talk myself through it. Getting a text without a clear sense of its meaning would scare me too.
Put the towels back where they were.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Winner!
And just to make sure they’re not TOO clean, pee on them.
Yeah right, like I could remember which towels they were and how they were arranged. Next time I’m at that house, I’ll count the towels and let you know the total. It’s gotta be at least 40, maybe 50 or more.
On further reflection, what probably happened was that with so many towels, they had to spread some of them out to decide which ones to bring. So the ones I found were probably the ones that made the semis but did not win. (Could I say “ones” more?)
gigi: Not to mention that this is my primary client. If I lose them, I’ll have a big gap to fill in. Which I can do, but I’d prefer not to have to, or at least not without advance notice.
Try not to worry. Maybe they were clean already and you washed clean towels. Lord knows I have told my house cleaner something like this a time or two, and it was never in a “holy hand grenades, I’mma fire you now” way. It was more a “oh my gosh, you opened my son’s door and cleaned the pit before I could stop you. I’mma sink through the floor I’m that embarrassed.” I’m fairly certain my son teaches classes to hoarders on the side.
Anyhoo, if they headed out on vacation, left a mess they didn’t intend you to deal with, like 40 towels, and forgot to tell you to skip that room, it might lead to that text. I wouldn’t worry about it. Unless you opened Bluebeard’s room to get to it or something, you’re fine.
Oh, there were only about eight towels on the furniture. The forty, fifty or more projection is regarding how many towels they own, overall.
I think I was just flashing back to Psycho Cindy, who once called to snap at me because I’d put away her running shoes that had been on the kitchen floor. She’d left them there to remind her to work out that evening. Mind you, she’d never done that before, and she never left a note for this or anything else. To her, though, it should have been obvious that if she’d left something in the kitchen that didn’t belong in a kitchen, it was there for a reason and a purpose. It does make sense when you look at it her way, but I didn’t work for her much longer after that.
What the hell have the hamsters been up to that you have to come in every three days to put the house back in order after you feed them? Those must be some serious party hamsters.
People who deal with rodents like that will probably have a broad understanding of human nature and be quite chill with towel incidents. You will be fine.
Maybe you could explain “The hamsters had gotten dirty and needed washing, so I tossed in the towels to make a full load.”
“We didn’t expect you to launder the hamsters.”
“Well using the rug beater didn’t work too well on the first one or two, and you didn’t leave money to have them dry cleaned.”
“Have you return to find unlaundered hamsters?! This isn’t FRANCE!!!”
I know how it is, I’m a professional fretter- in this case though for sure they were just saying thank you, that was above and beyond and appreciated.
I think if I were gone on vacation, having left towels strewn about the house that were not serving a purpose (like the towels Martha Stewart mentioned keeping all the pet hair off her furniture) I would be pleased to come home and find them all laundered, folded and put away. No one wants to come home to that mess, or come home to not having any clean towels.
Isn’t it obvious? They’re the relief crew for half the Internet’s infrastructure. 
Update: They got back Saturday, I went back to work for them today (Monday), and nary a word was said about towels or laundry. I got paid for the time I put in while they were gone, and it’s back to business as usual. And when I go back there tomorrow, I am going to count the towels and report back.
Well I take it that they had them out to USE them, or TAKE THEM… EITHER WAY, you didn’t need to LAUNDER them. This makes sense, if they didn’t take them they didn’t consider them the best.
Guessing:the towels were a bit smelly, so they spread them out to air.
I read this as “two hamsters’ worth [of laundry]” and was wondering how much laundry that would be.
Surely their little hamster suits would be dry-clean only? But maybe their underwear would go in the regular wash.