People who pick up ‘lost cats’

[SweeetFemaleAttitude]

Wtf is their thought process? All our local Facebook groups have a stream of a version of ‘I just found this cat…’ and a picture of a healthy calm cat.
They take them home, then post they have them and are looking for the owners. They drop them at the vets, or they post their location for other nutters to go find the cat. Or they decide it’s hungry and feed it every day. Today’s post that triggered this moan says ‘I just found this cat at xxxx. Seems friendly, where can I take it for scanning’. Has a picture of an adult cat being stroked on someone’s lap that looks healthy.
The better end just get them scanned, though even that tbh I don’t get for a one off encounter with a healthy cat.
It’s once in a blue moon there’s a reason like the cat has an injury, or seems neglected or is in an unsafe location or has moved into their garden full time.
I’m on all the local lost cat groups and fb just because I have a friendly cat. Last year he went missing for four weeks due to being taken in, he’s also been fed at numerous other houses over the years who’ve decided he’s a (very fat) stray (in robust health). None scanned him, though one tracked him here and said he was their stray they’d taken in after I’d had to shave off some matts in his fur.

I find all the posts really irritating and they aren't even my cats 🤣

Luckily mine don't let people get close enough to take them anywhere and there's only a few houses on this street and all the neighbours know they are mine

https://adelaidevet.com.au/news/the-importance-of-pet-identification/#:~:text=Tattoos%20are%20also%20used%20to,placed%20in%20the%20right%20ear.

I do think ear tattoos would help with this.

Two posts before the anti-cat brigade arrived.
Top marks - there must be a new alarm installed at HQ! 😂

My friend did this and then was surprised that the owner was a bit snarky when they came to collect it. I couldn’t understand why she’d decided the cat needed saving. There’s a cat that spends lots of time in my garden; healthy looking and just seems to like the peace of my garden. Would never occur to me to do anything about it

The “seems hungry” part always makes me laugh as my cat will act like she’s not been fed an hour after she’s eaten.

Do any people with roaming cats ever consider how many birds your happily roaming cats take out? It makes me SO sad. I've got a neighbour who I've seen insisting on Facebook that her cat never hurts anything, and the bloody thing is always wandering through my garden with birds in its mouth. It's like a weird blindness thing. "Oh my outside cat doesn't catch birds." Yes. Yes, it does. Own it.

And I'm delighted to hear that vets charge £50 to return a scanned cat. Why on earth should people have to put up with your cats coming into our gardens and laying waste to the wildlife?

My cat is indoor with use of a balcony. He won't wear a collar, he figured out how to bite open quick releases and then after we switched to elastic he worked how to escape from them too.

There does seem to be a lot of people who just see a cat doing its own thing outside and decide it must be abandoned, the cat is often very friendly and very healthy looking which would lead me to believe it has a good home already.

My carer went to pick something up from my neighbour, my cat walked out of the neighbour's.

They had been letting her in as they thought she was a stray kitten. Neighbour's grandson was feeding her milk, so I bought some cat milk for him.

She is very small. To look at her size you would think she was about 6 months old.

She still visits my neighbour and three others.

Fortunately I'm on a cul-de-sac and she doesn't go much further. Well she did when a previous neighbour lived at the top, she would accompany him to t he shop to buy cat food!

I'm glad my cat seems to stay in my garden. Also pretty sure she'd turn her nose up to anything anybody tried to feed her. Doesn't like milk, chicken, ham or beef. Not tried her on tuna yet. She'll eat dreamies but won't take them out your hand, only likes them from a bowl.

There's a lady in my village who is convinced any cat outside is 'lost' so feeds it.
She's been asked not to by the owners of the cats she feeds (one has a health condition which is why it's lean) but I suspect she has some memory loss and continues.
I think if you find a healthy, well fed cat on your doorstep acting hungry chances are it's a local cat that's chancing it's paw. Although I reckon several of the cats who have tried this on with me were being fed by cat sitters and taking umbrage. One fellow I think was looking for new digs and after a year and conversations with his owners I have adopted him with their permission.

there was an interesting series on cat behaviour on R4 recently . Domesticated cats know exactly how to do the "please feed me i'm desperately hungry" act plus some people have no clue what a healthy cat should look like weight-wise. At this time of year all the local cats are jostling trying to re-establish their time slots in garden territories.

Cats are bad enough, but there was a post on our local FB group a couple of weeks back, quite late in the evening - 'Has anyone lost this hedgehog?' 😂

This happens all the time on my
local FB page. Multiple posts a week that go

Photo of normal looking cat in garden
Does anyone recognise this cat? I think it’s lost. I offered it a tin of tuna/tray of smoked salmon/bowl of cream/tub of Dreamies and it then all. It’s starving! I’m taking it to the vet

Then multiple comments of ‘Poor thing’ You’re so good’

Multiple posts of healthy, normal looking 'lost' cats on my local FB as well who are always hungry and friendly.

People are idiots.

OMG I suppose it will be rats next.

Then multiple comments of ‘Poor thing’ You’re so good’

Yep. I'm convinced these sort of people don't actually care about the cats, they only post so others can tell them what a saint they are.

So what if they catch birds? Mine catches mice too. Animals catch other animals, it’s just the circle of life…unless the birds are a particularly endangered species (unlikely). Cats are meant to roam and not to be kept indoors all day.

Personally I can't stand all the "my cat has been missing for 2 (insert other ridiculously short period of time) hours - please can you check your sheds" posts. Listen love, I wouldn't even go check my shed if one of my teenagers came back a bit late, I'm certainly not doing it for your bloody cat.

Sometimes it works though

My neighbour found a cat a few months ago, it was hanging around her house for consecutive days and crying for food. Absolutely beautiful cat!

After a couple of weeks of posting on social media, turns out the cat was lost and from a considerable distance, about 15 min drive.

The owners hadn't neutered the cat so it was wondering miles. He wasn't chipped either.

Had she not posted on social media I don't think that cat would have been found by its owners.

YANBU
It's either complete stupidity or as a PP mentioned, a performance to elicit attention about what a Good Samaritan they are.
On mine it's related to swans. They live on two ponds nearby which have fences round them and whenever they leave the confines of the fence, people are calling the RSPCA or asking for residents with keys to unlock it so they can get back in.
Thankfully someone eventually told them to stop being so bloody stupid and that they had wings which they'd used to get out so imagine they'd be able to get back in should they wish to.

My neighbours put a paper collar on their "stopout" of a cat ! It was all over our fb page as being half starved and neglected it was being fed at every other house 😂

I don't know what the solution is but I think people should leave them be unless it's injured or owners ask on SM if anybody sees their cat.

It’s a big problem where I am (affluent area of busybodies). Often it’s people who’ve had other pets in the past, like dogs. They cannot intellectually grasp the concept that a cat is a wild animal that wanders freely then returns to its home base to allow its ‘owner’ to feed it. They don’t understand that a cat can take its own collar off. They expect all cats to look in the prime of life and anything elderly will be stolen then dumped at a vet as ‘I found this sick stray’. They want to ego-boost of having ‘helped’ without the commitment of actually rescuing a real stray cat from a shelter.

I’m particularly sensitive about this issue because when my sick elderly cat escaped house-arrest, some idiot decided she must be a malnourished kitten, took her in and fed her and kept her for a while. They only took her to a vet for scanning when they began to suspect she was ill. She had been on a special diet for her illness and what with them giving her the wrong food, plus the shock of being taken and trapped, she died soon afterward. The vet said it was the shock and stress of being taken that killed her.

Oh no the Swans do people not realise the fences are to keep people out and not the swans in 😆

@BovrilMartini That happened to my gorgeous grey cat. He was a big cat, not fat as such, just a solid build. He'd go off for wanders but always come back home. A few neighbours knew him so they'd keep their eye on him too.

One day he had been out on wanders and not come home. I was on FB and the local PaH vets had a post saying does anyone know whose cat this is. It was mine. I phoned them up, an old lady has taken him in as he "was starving". They gave her my number to arrange getting the cat back. She told me he had clearly been starving as he wolfed down the roast chicken she gave him.

Sadly he ended up moving in with her as she fed him nothing but roast meat and fish. I have a suspicion he's also now a house cat as no one ever saw him wandering the gardens. She also called him Mr Grey which is gross and creepy.