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AIBU?

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Original poster

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

124 replies

53rdWay · 19/01/2020 21:22

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!

OP posts:
CalleighDoodle · 19/01/2020 22:08

Ive two cats. Theyve never had collars. They are chipped. An RSPCA officer told me not to use a collar as she had seen some awful injuries because of them.

CalleighDoodle · 19/01/2020 22:08

Kittens are different. They need looking out for.

turnthebiglightoff · 19/01/2020 22:12

It happens a lot in winter. Especially with cats who are out all night. In the freezing cold.

KitKat1985 · 19/01/2020 22:14

I agree OP. What pisses me off is I think at least half of them who post these pictures on Facebook of "stray" cats that they've taken in or taken to the vets are only doing it for the "ur so kind hun" replies.

Notthebloodygym · 19/01/2020 22:16

I totally agree. My son has his heart broken when his cat was stolen in precisely this manner. By the time we had discovered the culprit (3 months later) the cat was bedded down and didn't want to move back in.

FreedomfromPE · 19/01/2020 22:20

You apparently have to feel a strong sense of entitlement to keep a cat.

bruffin · 19/01/2020 22:30

I've got a post on here about a cat that turned up over Christmas. She was in good condition but clearly starving , fed her after an afternoon of crying on my doorstep.
I took her to vet for chip but there wasn't one, put up posters, knocked on doors and posted on lost pet website. Put on a collar on asking owner to contact us.
She's moved in but terrorises my cat. My son will take her when he moves to his new house, but we have tried everything to find her owner.

IHaveBrilloHair · 19/01/2020 22:31

I nearly lost one of mine to a quick tease collar, that didn't release.
They are all chipped and healthy though.
I had one of them show up on a local site last year as "Looking sad and only having three legs, poor thing"
She was perfectly fine, how a cat looks sad is beyond me, and yes, she only has three legs, but the fluffy wee shit outruns the four legged cats when she wants to.

FainaSnowChild · 19/01/2020 22:47

A few years ago my elderly hyperthyroid cat disappeared. She was 15, very small , very friendly and, like most hyperthyroid cats, pretty skinny despite her medication. We went out for the day and left her sunning herself on our front step. When we got home she was gone.

We put up missing posters (days before FB) and 5 days later a neighbour knocked and said they thought our cat was at a cat rescue place. Some fucking busybody had seen our cat was thin, thought (because she was otherwise quite glossy and friendly for her age, and small) that she was a young cat and we were starving her, had seen us go out and "rescued" her to a rescue place where they fed her the wrong food (she was allergic to chicken, gave her itchy skin and bald patches). The thing that pissed me off the most is that this busybody never asked us about the cat, just thought they knew best. And the rescue place never put a card through the door or anything, just kept her. I was bloody furious.

We got her back of course.

Purpleartichoke · 19/01/2020 22:53

Crazy enough, the neighbors have never tried to “rescue” my cats, because I don’t let my cats wander.

SarahAndQuack · 19/01/2020 22:53

MIL does this.

Recently she 'found' a cat who was 'starving'. He seemed perfectly healthy and happy but as he ate what she gave him she decided he was a stray and needed a home.

Then he started fighting with her other cats, so she 'gave' him to her daughter five miles away.

And then he ran away from daughter's house.

So, the poor animal, who was probably someone's perfectly healthy pet, has been dragged away from its local area and may never get back to its family. Best case scenario is that it was a stray before (I don't believe so) and now it's one again ... but in a different area.

It made me so angry, and we kept telling her to stop, but some people love to be 'rescuers'.

BettyAll1 · 19/01/2020 22:53

Maybe everyone should just stop buying cats to keep as pets and we wouldn’t be in this mess.

FainaSnowChild · 19/01/2020 23:03

Crazy enough, the neighbors have never tried to “rescue” my cats, because I don’t let my cats wander.

Purpleartichoke, mine was "rescued" off our front step!

nobodyimportant · 19/01/2020 23:08

Well, I've twice had cats returned to me by people who cared enough to do something when they found them. One very young one had got scared by a neighbours dog and run a long way from home so we would never have found him. One very elderly, ill and confused, hadn't left the house in weeks but randomly wandered off. So I will always be grateful to the people that care.

We also had a stray tom cat that was coming in our house, spraying and terrorising my elderly cat. He'd been around a long time I had just assumed he lived nearby. I asked around the neighbours (and found out ours wasn't the only house he was visiting for food), I posted on local FB groups, I had it scanned for a chip, and I tried putting a collar on it. Nothing. So we fed it until we could get it in a rescue place which took about 6 weeks.

Judystilldreamsofhorses · 19/01/2020 23:10

I dread this happening with my cat, who is chipped, but doesn’t wear a collar. She doesn’t roam far and is always in overnight, but in the summer will spend whole days lying in next door’s garden sunbathing and hoping their DC will give her “sweeties” (Dreamies they keep for her!). I assume she also has other gardens and other friends.

madcatladyforever · 19/01/2020 23:13

I'm properly pissed off with this OP.
My cat had hyperthyroidism and was very skinny, her fur was dank because of it and she'd eat a horse given a chance. She's also 18 years old and 18 year old cats all look a bit pathetic.
She was handed in to the RSPCA as a flipping stray AFTER I had her taken for radioactive iodine treatment costing me £2000 (she has since totally recovered and is putting on weight again at the rate of knots and is nice and fluffy again).
RSPCA rang me as she's microchipped and I had to go in and explain the situation and they rang my vets to confirm all the treatment she had.
If the busybody who took her had gone and got her scanned at a vet this could all have been sorted out quickly instead of being a major bun fight with cat social services.
There are elderly mangy looking cats out there who are perfectly ok and/or recovering from treatment. She hadn't even gone far, she never goes further than the front garden so she'd obviously been swiped from there.
The RSPCA said she was in very good condition for her age and medical conditions.

FormerlyFrikadela01 · 19/01/2020 23:22

There are elderly mangy looking cats out there who are perfectly ok and/or recovering from treatment.

That's our cat. No doubt well meaning people would describe him as half starved if they out food out for him... but hes greedy and will eat tin after tin given the chance, still a skinny manky thing though

TheFormidableMrsC · 19/01/2020 23:23

Cats are a law unto their own and will do as they see fit. I have a cat that visits people, steals food and wanders far and wide. He's chipped but removes collars and I've given up with those. One day I glanced out of my bedroom window and saw a cat sitting happily inside the front window of a house across the road and was surprised because I hadn't realised they had a cat. Second glance with my glasses on...it was my sodding cat Hmm. There are so many FB posts about cats and I always think they should just be taken to the vet and scanned which saves an awful lot of faff. I did once keep a Siamese kitten overnight because it was sitting at my back door trying to shelter from very thick laying (and heavily falling) snow. I think it was a bit disorientated so I took it in and it stayed the night. Found the owner the next day who was very happy but that cat continued to come and visit until it was unfortunately killed in an RTA. They seem to have lots of friends all over the place. I am not sure what you do about it really!

Elsielouise13 · 19/01/2020 23:26

Years someone from a house two doors down started feeding my cat to the extent the disloyal toad moved in with them ( they fed him fresh chicken I fed him Felix).

Anyway, this went on for ages until one day she came to report the cat had worms . AND SHE BROUGHT IT IN A TISSUE TO SHOW ME.

Odd lady.

Stinkycatbreath · 19/01/2020 23:32

@vivacian cat owners as annoying as it is cannot identify a cats by its poo. How do you propose they take responsibility for it. Cats walk and poo miles away from their actual home in a day. That is crazy.

Ritascornershop · 19/01/2020 23:53

Oh good god yes!! I live on the other side of the planet and this behaviour is rife here too. “This cat turned up on my back porch today, meowed to be let in, ate my cat’s food and is now having a nap! Who is he? Does he have a home?!!!!” Photo of extremely plump and happy looking cat, preening for the camera.

Cats tell a lot of fibs about being starving, cats are much, much friendlier on average than their publicity would have you believe. Rescue kittens and try to find their owners, adults assume they’re just out for a stroll, unless repeatedly showing up and looking worse over time.

Juliette20 · 20/01/2020 00:03

I know some cat owners don’t like collars or claim their cat won’t wear one

My cats wear collars, they go through several a year each, as they are quite slim and smallish cats and the collars come off, even on the tightest setting. So sometimes they are in-between collars. I'm certainly not paying for a new name/number tag each, each time as well. It's clear they aren't strays though, to anyone but silly busybodies looking for a cat to "rescue".

tillytoodles1 · 20/01/2020 00:11

My cat died when he was 20. He was so skinny and mangy looking that people thought he was a stray. He was well fed and taken to the vets every time he was ill.

TheHagOnTheHill · 20/01/2020 00:30

I have 2 cats.One wears a collar and only looses it occasionally.The other got a tooth on her lower jaw stuck in the first one we gave her ,have no idea how long for as we had been out but the quick release catch did work as she was pulling upwards.She is now petrified of them.

vivacian · 20/01/2020 05:07

@vivacian cat owners as annoying as it is cannot identify a cats by its poo. How do you propose they take responsibility for it. Cats walk and poo miles away from their actual home in a day. That is crazy.

@Stinkycatbreath I have spent plenty of time and money trying to keep the toxic cat shit out of my garden. I’d like the owners to take responsibility.

It would almost be refreshing for a cat owner to write, “Actually, I know my cat is likely to be shitting in other people’s gardens, causing a danger to people and preventing them from enjoying their garden. The thing is, I don’t care. My decision to own a cat, in a heavily populated area, trumps all of that”.

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