To think you can't steal a cat?

[brasty]

This is in reference to a conversation with a friend. As long as the cat has access to outside, I don't think anyone can steal your cat. Your cat may decide though to live elsewhere, because of better food, because it is quieter, or some other preference.

So yes a cat flap is necessary

No it's not. If you can't keep other cats out then be a responsible owner and be around to let the cat out/back in through a door/window. Or don't own a cat at all. There's no excuse for stealing someone's cat, even with the bullshit mentality that you 'can't own a cat'.

It may seem a bit of a silly comparison, but ultimately the point is that if you wouldn't do it in any other circumstance, why do it with a cat?

It is a ludicrous comparison. Cats don't talk or play on Xboxes to take two from a million other reasons why it's ridiculous.

As a test of whether cats are property:
if Person A had an entire pedigree cat which they had bought at great expense with a view to breeding and showing it, but their neighbour Person B decided it belonged to them and got it neutered, would Person A have a legal claim against Person B. I think they probably would.
(Despite Person A separately being irresponsible to let an entire cat wander in this scenario).

Please don’t feed other people’s cats. I had a particularly friendly cat that, I discovered, was having a lovely time stopping in for dinner at numerous houses on the street. Each one believing that they were the only ones looking after the lovely fluffy friendly cat. No wonder he got fat.

All of those people who enjoyed the luxury of feeding the fluffy black cat and thought of him as ‘their’ cat didn’t extend that privilege to paying vet bills, or pet insurance, or regular flea treatments.

You can steal a cat, but I find it’s rare that people who do that actually take full responsibility for owning the creature.

Unless you can be sure that the cat is a stray, please don’t feed cats that don’t belong to you.

Nope if you don't want a cat to go in another house's cat flap, then you need to take responsibility for that.
I don't have a cat. This happened with my elderly parents and a friend. Other cat kept coming in cat flap and eating other cats food. And a cat will not decamp to another house permanently on that basis, unless it does not like your house.

Lots of cats like quiet houses, so do not like babies or young kids.

What happens when your toddler steals a cat by lifting it up and carrying it away?!

wasonthelist my comparison was that to some a cat is a member of the family and would be horribly missed if someone else decided it was 'happier at their house'. Then again, I've seen that there's a minority of posters on MN that have an almost sociopathic view on pets and think that one being lost/taken is 'no big deal, it's just a cat/dog/whatever'.

Toddler is below the age of criminal responsibility. No crime is committed.
I want QCs opinion on the general question. I need to know this

@baffledcat :D a round of applause at the miraculous Cat that will allow itself to be picked up by a toddler?

You can steal a cat if you prevent it from leaving once it's arrived. But if it chooses to live with someone other than its original slave "owner" then that's not stealing, so long as the cat is free to move back/on again.

I would be very upset if one of my cats chose to go and live with somebody else. But I don't see how I could stop her.

I think you can, if you deliberately lure it in and then make it a house cat. Otherwise I guess it's a grey area. Some cats on the other hand will just move in on whatever territory takes their fancy, encouraged or not.

As a kid I used to "own" a tiny little scrapper of a cat who made things very tense between my parents and a family a fair walk away. He would go through their cat flap, terrorise their cat, eat all his food and then sleep in their GC's crib, they bloody hated him! He'd been snipped as soon as he was old enough too!

There's a vast difference between actively encouraging someone's cat into your house and feeding it and shutting it in until it stays and is considered yours, and a neighbourhood cat entering your property and stealing your cat's food.

The former is stealing, the latter is a cat being a cat. And frankly as an owner if you're the one letting the cat out then the onus is on you to keep it from entering my property, not on me to keep it out.

And the very posts on this thread which point out that owners apparently don't mind their cats going into other people's houses just as long as they're not fed there speaks volumes.

I am not saying it is a big deal if a cat chooses to live elsewhere, it is and very upsetting.But cats are very independent. They do what they choose.

And there is nothing sociopathic about thinking that animals are not the same as people.

Also my cat ran away when I was 4 years old to another house. I was upset. But lots of cats don;t like young children trying to stroke and hold them, and my cat didn't. So it left.

One of my neighbours stole my cat. I knew he was getting fed elsewhere as he would disappear for a few days and come back looking plumper, and his coat stank of cigarette smoke and febreeze. Fair play to him. But then he kept came home with a collar on, and one day I saw him sat (looking very smug) in their living room window. When he got unwell it was us that took him to the vet though. I did think about asking them to chip in, but wasn't brave enough.

baffled they learn the hard way!

But no one owns a cat, they own you, and can make their own choices. We had a cat who tried to own us, always at the door, til we got a dog and she, the dog, only wanted to be friends but the cat now keeps just the other side of fence. Not sure if this [[http://www.tomwinnifrith.com/articles/11440/photo-article-from-the-greek-hovel-dealing-with-rats-as-i-discuss-kidnapping-some-cats
link]] will work but warn you that it may make language on MN seem tame.

Actually, my understanding is that cats are property. A quick Google threw up that they are regarded as "chattel".

Have the cats read and agreed that description?

Until then, you can call it what you like, but a cat that has freedom does not need to pay attention to such triffling human concepts.

A dog knows it's part of the pack and conforms. A cat does what it chooses.

Yes try telling a cat it is chattel.

Look you choose to get a pet that is famed for its independence and doing what the fuck it likes. Sometimes what it wants to do is live elsewhere.

YABU.

Our cat loves being stroked by my 2 children actually and often chooses to sleep on one of their beds.
I don't think anyone is saying that they 'don't mind' their cats going on others houses just that if people have cat flaps that don't solely allow their own cat in or leave door and windows open wide then they are going to risk roaming animals coming in.
A cat going into your house no more lives with you than lives on top of my neighbours shed or any other place it likes to hang out. You allow warm access and food and cats will come in. It doesn't make them your cat.

Interestingly a dog which wandered around the area could ultimately be picked up by a dog warden and would eventually be rehomed elsewhere if not claimed.

But cats wander as they like and for some reason the owners of the cats feel that it's the other householders who are responsible for keeping the cat out of its property rather than the cat's owner's responsibility for keeping the cat in if they don't want it wandering off.

FWIW I don't encourage other people's cats on to my property. I don't currently have cats and my cat flap is locked. But I wonder what cat owners would feel would be reasonable for me to do to keep other cats away should they come calling.... throwing buckets of water at them perhaps? Allowing my dogs to chase them off my property? (I've done that in the past when a particularly Nasty cat used to come in and terrorise my cats,) putting them in a carrier and taking them to the local rescue? Perhaps if more people did that it would discourage cat owners from allowing their cats to wander on to other people's property?

At school I had a friend whose parents decided to breed Persians. They bought these ridiculously expensive cats, to breed from, except one of them got out and was served by the local black and white tom. Cutest kittens but financially worthless. They were furious that this unneutered tom was allowed to venture out and impregnate their pedigree. They didn't see the irony of the fact that their expensive pedigree, who was also unneutered, happened to be out as wel.

What a load of nonsense. You can't just take someone else's pet!

@Onemoretune

Brasty - I bet the “ownership” would suddenly revert back to the original owner if said cat needed £4000 worth of veterinary treatment...

This ^

@brasty

No, I have a friend who have a cat that came to live with them, and they pay all the vets bills

So, it still belongs to the other owner, but the people who have stolen the cat and now say it's theirs, have pay all the vet bills?

I am really struggling to believe that.

If someone stole any of MY cats, I would call the police. I am pretty sure I know whose side they would be on. The cats are registered on their microchip at MY address, they are registered at the vets at MY address, and I still have the receipts and paperwork from when I got them from Cats Protection. So you're deluded if you think you would be allowed to take my cats.

Why the hell are you encouraging cats around your house and feeding them anyway brasty? Get your own bloody cats!

And to you and the people saying you can just take someone else's cat because no-one owns it (apparently,) you are talking crap. Educate yourself

www.pets4homes.co.uk/pet-advice/your-pets-and-the-law.html

From the article...

The law regarding theft of owned pets

The Theft Act of 1968 covers companion animals, and if your cat or dog is stolen then you have the same legal rights of recourse as you would if anything else you owned was illegally taken.

In an instance where an animal is lost or strays, the pet is still considered to be the property of the original owner, and anyone who finds a lost pet must make reasonable endeavours to do everything possible to locate the original owner and return their pet to them before any provision for permanent re-homing can occur.

The Criminal Damage Act of 1971 also considers it an offence in contravention of this act if any person deliberately harms or kills an animal belonging to another person. This is in addition to the Animal Welfare Act clauses as stated above.

brasty
Look you choose to get a pet that is famed for its independence and doing what the fuck it likes. Sometimes what it wants to do is live elsewhere.

Stop talking drivel. You're embarrassing yourself. You can't just take someone's pet, or start feeding it, so it chooses you. It's a bit pathetic actually. Like I said, get your own cat!