To wish people would stop trying to rescue other people's pet cats?

[53rdWay]

Every week or so on local FB page: "Anyone recognise this cat? Keeps coming in our garden. Looks lost. Clearly starving, eats everything we put down for it. Need to get it home poor thing." With photo of sleek/pudgy-looking cat.

Then there'll be a load of comments going "can you get him in a carrier???" "poor lamb it's so cold out there today :(" "get a paper collar on it!" "oooh what a gorgeous cat, I'll have it if you can't find an owner" and the local cat rescue crew tagging each other in to get someone down there with a microchip scanner right this instant. And then eventually someone turns up to say "that's my Bertie, I live two doors down from you, he's perfectly fine please stop feeding him" EVERY TIME.

It's a CAT. Just because it's in your garden doesn't mean it's lost and homeless! And just because it eats whatever you give it doesn't mean it's starving!

Didn’t I see this exact thread a few weeks ago?

I wish other people would take responsibility for their pets so I didn’t have to constantly deal with the shit in my garden.

I'd love to see how you can keep a cat from using exactly where they want as their toilet.

Not unreasonable. My cats been 'rescued' twice. FB has a lot to answer for

Nope! I found my direct next door neighbour on Facebook because she posted a picture of my cat in her garden!
I did take a cat in once though and posted his picture on Facebook- he was incredibly skinny with long matted fur. Turns out he lives near me but has pretty crap owners who don't bother grooming him. I would never attempt to 'rescue' him again though now I know he has a home.

My next door neighbour tried to "rescue" our cat. She meant well, hes very very old and looks proper mangy and scraggy now but the insinuation that we arent looking after him pissed me off.

Mine was taken to the vets by someone a few doors down. Poor little thing, he hates being put in a carrier. I could hear the vet eyerolling down the phone when she rang me!

A friend was overjoyed to "rescue" a cat and had a few blissful happy weeks feeding him the best tuna and chicken. Until one day the owners knocked at her door. He had just decided the grass was greener at my friend's home. Not a stray at all.

I'd love to see how you can keep a cat from using exactly where they want as their toilet.

I’d love to see the actual owners take responsibility, so I guess we’re both going to be disappointed.

In the meantime, the rest of us are having to deal with it, in our gardens, where we’d like to garden and have our children play free from the hazards of cat shit.

I agree exactly. It's ridiculous. Cats wander - that's what they do.

It's hilarious!

But I did "rescue" a cat a few years ago. Looked uncared for, starving, v nervous. Posted pic on local FB page and after some shenanigans the owner came and caught it. They'd moved a few miles away and the cat had got confused. Had been missing a good few months.

She sent me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers to thank us for feeding him and alerting via FB and told us how over the moon their other cat was when the missing one was reunited.

These cat rescue posts have me laughing every time. Proper winds me up too though! They're cats, of course they are gonna be wandering about and eating anything and everything haha.

The problem is a lot of cat owners don’t put collars on their cats and even when they do they rarely include a phone number or address. I recently had a very skinny and dirty uncollared cat turn up outside my house, he meowed constantly every time anyone went in/ out of the house and kept trying to sneak in, he didn’t leave all day and seemed desperate in his miaows so I did end up letting him in for food and posted his photo on a local missing cat Facebook page. The cat turned out to live just a few streets away and owners said he had form for disappearing for a few days and turning up at a well-meaning persons house, but without a collar how was I to know whether he was a chancer or a genuinely hungry stray? He really did look in a poor condition but it turned out he’s just old and because his fur is white looks dirty.

I know some cat owners don’t like collars or claim their cat won’t wear one but in that case don’t complain when it’s not immediately obvious to other people that the cat has an owner.

I have had cats just wander in my cat flap for years, currently a very fluffy well groomed bugger comes in and sits with us as we eat our dinner and comes in later for a late night bedtime snack.

Luckily mine are so laid back they are used to others wandering in and eating their food. I think they must lock him/her out at night as I've caught he/ she camping out in my kitchen when it gets nippy.

Never even crossed my mind to nab him/ her and wander off to the vets as they are perfectly healthy and looks well loved. They are just using us as an airB&B.

As for cats shitting in other peoples gardens mine have a dedicated dumping area in mine which gets used by all and sundry. Neighbour once complained my cats were crapping in their garden, turned out it was foxes.

Hedgehogs do like to crap by my back door in the summer for some reason.... prickly little poo bastards.

Yes and no. At my old address the previous owners didn’t take their cat with them, the poor thing was forever attempting to get back into the house however it wasn’t feasible due to various reasons. A next door neighbour decided they would have it, it ended up been a mangy cat, clumps if hair missing, teeth missing, full of bites and it’s eyes were turning white, Totally skeletal. I would feed it, it would eat so quickly it would vomit. the neighbour who took him in was adamant he was a she. I only found out about the neighbour from posting on Facebook about the cat, I was just so heartbroken by it’s poor condition. I rang rspca over how badly neglected it was, they didn’t care. Another person eventually posted on Facebook with a few dead pictures of him at the side of a road next to were we lived. I went and told her, she didn’t care at all. I rang the vets it was dropped off at, no one ever claimed him. Very sad ☹️.

Mynewbear you can get them checked for a chip*. As for collars? I have given up, mine 'lose' them within days. You realky cannot make a cat wear one if they din't want to.

*I know not all cat owners chip, such people are irresponsible idiots and have no excuse.

This has happened a couple of times with one of our two (he's a perfectly healthy weight, just at the lower end, according to our vet but people insist he looks starved - he isn't, but he will eat like he's starving if offered food!). It really worries me - he is chipped, but I worry about someone taking him and not bothering to scan him. He's absurdly friendly and so would be very easy for some well-meaning idiot to 'rescue' (steal).

I can't put a collar on him, he can get them off so the best case scenario is that he takes it off in five minutes and I've entirely wasted the price of a collar, worst case scenario is that he can't get it off and hangs himself trying - obviously not willing to take that risk!

An old neighbour stole one of my cats.

I asked and asked her to stop feeding him ‘But he keeps coming in, and he’s hungry’
Of course he is, he’s a greedy fucker!

Can you block your cat flap, as you don’t actually have any cats of your own?
‘I can’t do that, he miaows to be let in’

To be fair, we had just got another dog he wasn’t keen on, but they just needed to get used to each other.
He did used to come and visit me in the garden sometimes

Fat, glossy coated cat you’ve just spotted for the first time? Don’t feed it. If it keeps hanging around, pop a post or two on one of the myriad local Facebook groups.

Thin cat with poor matted coat? Well, I’m going to feed it a couple of meals while I attempt to find an owner.

Not rocket science to tell the difference and realise it’s not as simple as ‘never feed a strange cat’, is it, OP?

Oh... and I will never put a collar on one of my cats... the injuries they can cause (yes, even the ones with safety releases) are horrific.

They’re all chipped though.

My cat won't wear a collar. He removes them. I watched him out the window hook it on a branch and slither backwards out of it. He also attacked the fuck out of my ankle after I put it on. That was maybe the 3rd collar I bought and I gave up after that.

It is difficult to tell if a cat is neglected or just old. We had a very long lived cat we had for 16+ years and it got really manky looking by the end and it was always being rescued as people thought it was a stray. Twice it got taken in to the local vets and they returned it to us knowing full well it was just incredibly old and bony, it's skin was literally hanging down it was just like a 100 year old person! It often slipped out of its collar as it was probably rubbing, although we did keep putting one back on with a tag with our phone.

I suppose better that people got it wrong and still cared, but it was a bit annoying.

Literally the same happened with my parents neighbours cat. Posted on a local fb site by someone i know saying ‘keeps Showing up at my house poor thing must be lost’ and i laughed because it lives 5 doors down from them.

Ours also won't wear a collar.

It's relatively easy to make your garden unattractive as a cat toilet. Try not to leave bare earth, if you have to, put netting over it, or use garlic granules.

We took a kitten in last winter for the night. Owner came after fb ads. It was a neighbour's but he was way too small and had escaped!! He wouldn't have survived the night I expect. Road kill or frozen...