To ask you to stop feeding ‘stray’ cats

[Notopel]

Just started Saturday morning off clearing cat sick off the carpet. And it’s because once again the fat, very well fed cat has been fed at another house. He can’t eat generic cat food and needs grain free specialist food.

I’ve bought him numerous ‘do not feed’ tags for a collar which have all ended up in a tree somewhere, I imagine.

If you do think you’ve got a hungry stray on your hands, then please take them to a cat rescue instead. But in reality your hungry stray is often just someone else’s greedy cat.

And before anyone suggests I keep him in, he’s a rescue cat who we adopted at 7 years old. He’s used to being outside and we have a huge natural valley on the doorstep (ideal environment for cats to roam).

If you do think you’ve got a hungry stray on your hands, then please take them to a cat rescue instead.

Theres also a poster here who has neighbour troubles -the neighbour takes her chipped cat to the rescue almost daily, just to piss off the cats owner. Says its neglected. It isnt

Cats are so clever. It's their big, 'nobody loves me' eyes.

We have a 'stray' cat. He's actually next door's but stealthy took up a time share option in to our house, shortly after our own cat passed away. We don't feed him as we're wise to his pitiful look and know his owners feed him but it took us putting posters up in our road to establish that he was in fact owned and actually very well looked after

With the warm weather and the back door being open all day, he saunters in, sleeps in our wardrobe and then leaves when it's dinner time. He still tries it on and meows like he's not eaten in weeks. Like most cats, he's a chancer.

It's quite normal for a cat to have more than one home! Ours once disappeared for a couple of weeks, we assumed the worst, he then returned, happy and well fed. Read Six Dinner Sid, our children loved it.

My MIL is one of those 'it's just nice to feed the poor kitties a treat!' idiots.

Recently she decided a certain cat she'd been feeding must be homeless because 'he keeps coming back!' (No shit! Because you feed him!)

Then she found he was fighting with one of her other three cats, so insisted she had to 'find' him a home. Which meant that one of her daughters who lives several miles away ended up, against her better judgement, taking in the 'stray' cat.

Who promptly ran away, leaving MIL wailing that poor kitty was lost.

We asked if she'd tried to find out in the first place if he had owners.

'Well, I asked next door if he was theirs,' she said.

It makes me bloody furious thinking there's probably a family out there wondering where their pet has gone, and I only hope he got back to them.

Any cat that comes into my garden gets chased out with a loud hand clap or a mug of water skillfully lobbed (to scare not to hit)

I had guinea-pigs for years, I did not want cats near them.

I now have my own two cats , I do not want the more predatory felines thinking they own the garden , it belongs to my cats .

If mine wander (as they will) I have told my neighbours to do the same (shout/clap/water) but mine are very timid and a hard look would scare them (they've only been going out a couple of weeks , so tend to stay in a close vicinity to the house)

I wouldn't feed a random cat that appeared . Different if it was obviously in peril , but even then, I'd try and find out if it was owned.

I never feed other cats, but... I don't understand if someone has a cat that needs a special diet and they could get ill if they ate anything else, why you wouldn't keep them indoors? There always a high chance of living near a feeder

You should get him a collar that says "Cat Herpes" or something. They probably wouldn't touch him then.

I feed my neighbours cat all the time, he calls for me. I know I shouldn't, but the owner regularly goes away and expects him to fend for himself. Then sometimes I see him in their window. I can't stand to think something or someone is hungry, so if I can I feed when needed,.why not. I'm sure he might get fed elsewhere because I've see him a street over too, but he's not overweight... I know he's hungry because he will even take my dog on to call at my back door... Yes I am a sucker and he's probably using me and many others!

All moot as I think I’m going to kill him. Been getting increasing number of flies in the kitchen, and they seemed to be crawling out from under the fridge freezer today. Pulled it out and found ..... yep, a decaying mouse under it 🤢 He’s a bugger for bringing them in.

Flymageddon, picking up a decaying mouse and cleaning up regurgitated cat food.

Can’t imagine how he ended up at the cat rescue.