Fellow accidental cat owners, how did you end up with yours

[whyameyehere]

Ours: found

Dd1 and her friend heard a distressed kitten crying in a ditch. Five days later and with the help of a trap we had a half-starved 3 month old feral kitten in our kitchen after years of me and dh saying we were not getting a cat

3 months later we are definately his slaves, even dh who was not a cat person

Cat #1 was an 'accidental cat'. She turned up at our back door one icy cold evening, and I couldn't leave her out in the cold, so let her stay overnight. I sent DH to the local shop to buy some chicken for her, as we're vegetarians, so had no meat in the house. She turned up the next couple of nights as well, which was fine, as we needed to use the chicken up.

I took her to a vet, she wasn't micro-chipped, so I asked a few neighbours and someone recognised her as belonging to a couple who lived in a neighbouring street. I went and knocked on their door, the guy answered and I said to him, "I have your cat here," and said where she'd been the last few nights. He said to me, "she isn't happy here, she doesn't get on with our other two cats, you can keep her if you want," and shut the door! That was ten years ago now, and she's still the boss of the household.

Up until recently, the other cats who lord over this house, have been adopted from shelters.

However we moved house in November 2018, and just after Christmas, a very persistent cat turned up at the door. Took her to the vet, she was micro-chipped, and turns out she belonged to the previous owners (who have moved abroad). I contacted them, and the woman told me that they'd made plans to put her in a shelter, due to the move abroad, but she hadn't returned home for the last three weeks before they moved out. She told me they'd feared the worst, as she was chipped, and no-one had said they had found her. "Take her to the shelter," she told me, "and explain she turned up." Yeah right, like that was going to happen. Instead, we simply changed the owner's name to mine on the microchip registration, and now she's back in her home where she belongs, just with a different set of humans to treat with contempt!

DH has said that absolutely no more cats are allowed in this house, but even he knows, were another one to turn up at the door, that once they claim ownership of you, that's it. There is no choice on the part of the human/s.

I'm sort of an accidental cat owner!
Everyone meet Wolverine/snowy/snowflake/puss puss...

For the last couple of years this cat has been coming into my back garden, always looked well
fed but a little bit scruffy. I'd never really gave him/her much thought apart from in passing if I saw it in the garden.

However, Christmas Day I was busy doing the dinner and I noticed it curled up on the grass so I thought I'd check on it later but I forgot, anyway, the next day I noticed it was still there seemingly in the same position and I really though it died there but as I went out to check it woke up. It's very nervous but I've fed it a couple of times to try and build some trust but I haven't saw it for a few days so I'm hoping it belongs to someone even though he looks a bit dirty and seems to Leary's have the same mucky patch on its head.

Does he look like a feral/stray cat?

This one turned up over the back wall around about this time 5 years ago. It was freezing cold and about half a foot a snow and the tiny black thing was meowing and shivering cold she couldn't have been anymore than 4/5 weeks old. We brought her in to keep her warm but it turns out she was from a neighbour a few doors down who had been given it as a Christmas present. She didn't really want it and thought it would fend for itself outside whilst she was at work because she didn't want it to piss on the carpet. We took her back bit she put her outside the very next day so we tried to tell neighbour the tiny thing would freeze because she was so small and in the end she said we should have it as she never wanted it anyway. We didn't really want a cat but I wasn't going to leave her with horrid neighbour so she has been with us ever since. She still runs away from horrible neighbour.

Love this thread! I lived overseas in a country where cats did not get an easy ride. This starving bolshy LOUD cat came screaming into my villa demanding food one day and never left. When I flew back to UK for good a few years later, her flight cost THREE TIMES as much as mine did. Wasn't going without her though!

my cat Literally turned up on doorstep one week after moving into my new house !! She was all Thin n all straggly.. It was snow n ice outside. I let her spend the night in the kitchen coz that's where the cat flap from previous owners was was n she had turned up at 10pm in the evening. Next day was Sunday, on the Monday I put her out the front n few minutes later she came in the cat flap at the back, must have run all,the way round the back to the cul de sac n jumped the fence. Took her to vets to check for chip n checked all local missing posters. Nothing!! So she stayed! Been 6 years now!

I was calling for our dog to come in from the garden. She arrived followed by an unknown cat who plonked itself on the kitchen chair and would not respond to us attempting to shoo it away. On closer inspection we realised it was very thin, its coat was matted and there was no collar. It hung around the garden for a couple of days and got on like a house on fire with the dog. We put up posters round the village asking if anyone had lost a cat. Eventually we took it to the vet who scanned it for a microchip and gave her a health check. No one come forward to claim her. She is still with us and is very much a part of the fhousehold 8 years on.

I visited a friend (not particularly close) about three years ago. The house was empty. I didn't know her partner had died, she left the house about three months before and left her cats to be looked after by the neighbours. She had no intentions of coming back.

I'm a dog person who then went home with two cats! first night was hideous, they just ran around, crashing into shit and making tons of noise. I massively regretted it

Three years on I now wouldn't be without the little darlings they are my best buddies.

My mum's ex-husband (who was a father figure my entire life) was diagnosed with lung cancer and I agreed to look after the cat "temporarily" whilst he was in and out of hospital. He ended up dying a few weeks later, and the only person who would take the cat was his ex-girlfriend. Well I wouldn't have left her with a house plant, so the cat is mine.

I offered sympathy to a colleague who had lost their parent, and somehow ended up with the parent's elderly cat. It has been like introducing 'the other woman' into the house. She now totally owns my husband, bosses the dogs and we think she is great! A very successful, but totally unplanned adoption - we were not going to get any more cats!

We have this little bugger , Clive . We have a plot of land opposite our house , which was bought by people with an intention to build their own house and basically live the Good Life , except after spending a fortune on fancy chickens and adopting 3 cats to hunt vermin, they massively underestimated how much effort and cash everything was going to take , and ran out of money . Then it got really cold , so they decided to fuck off to warmer climes , and abandoned all the animals . I found Clive sheltering in my barn , skinny as hell, hissing and spitting at me , and our greyhounds , who were bemused at the furry fury ball , but he would let my dd feed him . So we agreed he could live in our stables , if he earned his keep. Which is why he’s currently curled up on her bed , snoring .

Clive has different ideas on what earning his keep is by the sounds of it.

My ILs accidentally acquired a cat. It was next door's originally, but then they got dogs and the cat was scared of them. Next door kind of neglected the poor cat, leaving it's food outside to get eaten by the wildlife and the cat took to coming in the IL's house for food and love instead. ILs even bought a basket, cat food, cat toys etc, as he was basically living at their house. When next door moved, they asked ILs if they officially wanted the cat and they said yes.

Ohhhh Clive is a beauty 😻

DCat1: Me and DH were going out for a run, turned the corner at the bottom of our road and there were two kittens, smack bang in the middle of the road. One sadly died as we got there 😔 the other was filthy. Took both home, buried the poor little dead one. The other one is sat next to me as I type, 14 years later.

DCat2 (now sadly departed and much missed): He actually lived down the road but one day just marched his enormous kitten paws into our house. Despite carrying back home several times, he kept coming back and his original owners ended up giving him to us. He was a brilliant cat.

I know have DCats 3&4 but they came from Cats Protection.

Man, I’d love to just find some kittens again or have one just walk into the house.

My Great Grandma had a feral cat and her kittens living on her garden/in her shed for years. She found them in the abandoned Lido next to her house. Could never get them to come inside the house. Managed to get them neutered and wormed/flead though.

I was about 5 at the time. I used to spend hours watching them.

My dm returned to ours with 2 kittens after a weekend of having my dd's to stay. We had visited db's and sils a few weeks earlier and I had remarked i wanted them all, you know as you do with things so damn cute.

I bought a house and the seller left 2 elderly cats behind. This left me with a bit of a reputation so a local marital breakup resulted in a third coming my way. One is a vicious killer (bunnies and pheasants), one has no teeth (but can give a vicious suck) and the teenaged one is just a nutter who bites and attacks passing legs. I wouldn't be without any of them.

I didn’t like cats but my ex did, so I did a lot of research and agreed to adopt one. By the time we got divorced, all I cared about was keeping the cat.

So not entirely accidental, but I did find myself sitting in an apartment alone with the cat, wondering how it had happened.

The cat is obsessed with me and I adore him. I got remarried and am happy to say that he likes my husband far more than he ever liked my ex.

I took some fish to local cat rescue and had a look round. Black and white cat meowed at me repeatedly. Game over.. he was mine from then on, now 17 and a little bit senile but a lovely lovely boy.

It seems we all ended up with our cats in a variety of ways, the one common factor is the way they weedle their way into your heart.

Norman moved in with us when he was six. His owners had moved house and left him in the old property's garden. DSIL asked if we'd take him in. Within ten minutes of him coming through the front door for the first time he was sat on my knee. 13 years later he's still with us, still sat on my knee! Love my boy.

I joked to a neighbour that I'd have her cat as she was complaining about how annoying it was in wanting affection. About a month later, her son knocked on the door and asked if I was serious, so I got a cat (and, in fairness, a bundle of toys, so it's not that they had failed to try and look after her). Was less impressed about a month later when she went into season, as I'd been told she had been done. But she's still here and still annoying people because she's absolutely neurotic about wanting fuss all night .

The other one, somebody I knew from a forum mentioned her daughter had taken in a stray that had moved into the yard of her workplace. Inevitably, the cat started looking fatter than would be expected from just receiving regular tins of cat food.

A few weeks later, I was there sexing the kittens for her and my friend gave me that look - all the females had homes to go to and she had decided she was going to keep the other male with her bunch of cats and a dog who adored being a kitten mum. Which left one male potentially homeless... I said no. But he was very cute. She said it wasn't a problem, she'd found homes for all the others, so it wouldn't be hard to find one more.

Few weeks later, Mum cat was off being spayed and I came back through Central London using a walking stick (I'd been ill) and carrying a small kitten curled up inside my handbag (I couldn't manage the weight of a cat carrier).

The furry twat turned out to be disabled (Cerebellar Hypoplasia), is a complete moron, but is possibly the most good natured idiot I've ever met even more so than the OH

I've never paid a penny for a pet, as I'm fully of the belief that they turn up when it's time for you to have a pet because I give off invisible signals that I'm a fucking mug .

In unrelated news, my shed is always open. If a stray cat decides to take shelter and have kittens, of course that would be an accident, too.

After our beloved cat died aged 21 I swore Id never have another but when my mum took ill I brought her cat to ours to care for.
When she died he stayed with us.
Ruling the roost, tolerating pet rats, interfering in everything we do, falling out windows...

He's now diabetic but is coping fine so far.

Our friends have emigrated and the vet said Dcat was too old to go with them.... He lives with us now and we adore him.

I have never met a cat like him, he is a dog cat. He just wants to hang out and be involved with people.

I was working in an office housed in a portacabin next to a factory in the middle of an industrial estate. One day a tiny kitten fell through a hole in the roof about six feet from my desk. I took that as a sign from above he was for me. Put him in a box which had formerly contained printing paper and took him home. He was 4 weeks old and not even weaned yet. Took him to a vet for a check up, the vet said: "They don't usually survive when they're that small, I wouldn't bother". I took him home and bottle fed him around the clock until he was big enough for real food. He's now 16 and a grumpy old man. That showed that stupid vet.

I also sent one of the boys from the factory up the roof where there was another kitten. He took it home for his girlfriend. The lads had been putting food out for the mum but she disappeared, possibly run over. So by falling through the roof my cat saved not just his own life, but his sister's too.

Our landlady got herself a kitten, however she also enjoyed holidays and weekends away and just left the kitten to fend for itself, it became almost feral. We were asked to put food out for her by the door but it attracted all the neighborhood cats, they used to beat her up. She received a nasty cut to her head which abscessed, I asked if she would get her vet treatment but she refused, went away and cat became very poorly. Took her to the vets, treated came home with us and moved in. She shunned the landlady and moved in with us, 17years later still with us. She is the best, loyal, affectionate, funny friend, and our family adore her.