Neighbours stealing other neighbours cats!!!

[A1Mum]

Okay, that may be a bit dramatic. I am usually a pretty laid back, easy going person and in general I get on with most people. However...

I moved into a new house late year. I had high hopes of getting to know the neighbours and form new friendships which has happened but not with my direct neighbour because I have a bee in my bonnet.

AIBU: to not want to get to know my neighbour better when I know she actively encourages and takes in the two cats who belong to the neighbour a few doors down. They meow rather loudly to get in daily and do go in every night. I can see them lying on the counter through the window. I just happened to see a tail wagging in the window one day that caught my attention. I actually thought they were their cats until I was speaking with the owners and one of their cats walked by and I said it was my neighbours cat. She looked a bit surprised and said, "no, they are my cats and I have two but they have stopped coming home, I think someone else is feeding them".

The thing is it's really non of my business I know but if they were my cats I would want to know where they are. Who is taking the correct care of them if someone has unofficially adopted them. I doubt very much if they are being wormed and flea'd if they don't own them. One of them looks particularly skinny now.

What would you do?

A run or non-exit-able fencing would be the answer.

That way she'd know where her cats were & not be "worried" if they weren't home...

We are rather rural. The people, who owned our house before us, used to have cats. We therefore have a cat flap. It's blocked in a way, which means cats can only get out,...not back in. (Confuses our neighbours' cats endlessly.) However, when the weather is nice, all of our doors towards the garden tend to be open (conservatory ones and the large bifold doors, leading out from our bedroom). We get three different cats come in every now and then. One of them likes to sleep on my piano stool,...so I will wander in and suddenly it's just snoring there. Another quite likes our sofa. I know, who their owners are, and try to avoid feeding them. (With one of them, it's the only thing that will keep it busy for long enough for me to shut the door and get it out of the house...)
When our neighbours got theirs as kittens, they suddenly turned up outside our window one night and wouldn't be quiet. I took them round all the different neighbours to find out, who they belonged to. (They were tiny...) They've been coming back for a play in our garden ever since. I frequently evict them from our house. It doesn't bother them in the slightest and they come back again and again. I don't even like cats.

My first cat (and soul mate) had lived with me for a few years before I married. He moved out after I had two babies in quick succession (two in eleven months). He was no longer able to sit on my knee in peace, his household became chaotic!

He moved to stay with an elderly lady over the stream at the bottom of our garden (over a bridge) but he visited me regularly. I still took him to the vets for shots/treatments etc, when necessary. I accepted his decision although missing him greatly. When we were preparing to move house I went to the lady's house and asked her if she wanted to take over responsibility for his care permanently because we were moving several hundred miles away. She said "no", so we took him with us (I was so glad).

At our new home he met a neighbour a few doors away, again, another single person, and shared his time with both of us. He was always my baby (first born) though and lived to a ripe old age.

You won't be able to stop a cat from going into someone's home (if the door or window is open) except by keeping them in your own home. That's cruel if they are used to being outside. Your neighbour should accept that her cat is a wanderer and an independent spirit. Perhaps she can come to some arrangement with this woman so that the cat is shared.

Take a cat out on a lead? Cat proof fencing? Really?

You might not like cats but you really can't contain them in that way.

It's not irresponsible Ownership to not keep them in a cage!

Our cat has been able to scale our 8 foot fence since she was a kitten.

I would tell the owner who is feeding her cats.

I would view someone in a very different light if I found out they were deliberately "cat stealing" so YANBU.