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.

We've had this on our neighbourhood group with a rabbit ("looks like somebody's pet"- just a plain, brown standard wild rabbit) and a stoat/weasel thing ("has someone's pet ferret escaped?")

That article doesn’t mention cats anywhere. In fact it says:

Wildlife experts agree that the decline in bird populations is largely driven by habitat loss.

A cat catching a bird every now and again will not have a large impact on their population numbers. Birds are the prey of lots of other animals too, including other birds, all of which is just part of the cycle of life.

Ah yes, you're not like my neighbour whose "cat doesn't kill birds". Your cat only kills common or garden variety birds. What a clever cat!! Intelligence must be a household trait.

I have noticed on our last cal neighbour group there are more cat posts than most other things. I keep an eye on it because my cats are both friendly and nice looking. One has a really long fluffy coat. Luckily they tend to stay mostly in the garden.

I'm not on FB, and the local WhatsApp group is just the direct neighbourhood so we know who pets belong to. So the only changes of ownership have been consensual - two cats moving in with my neighbour after their owners got dogs. There seem to be enough cats and dogs to deter random incomers.

Except for the peahen, she required a bit of investigation!

I'm curious - while obviously FB can be useful when there's a genuinely lost pet, do you think it's increased the number of interfering busybodies?

Theres honestly an epidemic of it around here! Just leave the cat alone!!!

Guffawing here at “has anyone lost this hedgehog?”

Our local FB group is full of this too - people snatching perfectly healthy, happy cats off the pavement because they’re “lost”. There’s been some pushback from owners who’ve had to traipse down to the vet to reclaim their pet.

The ONLY time I have ever picked up a cat on the street was when it was a cat I’d known for a few years. It would hang around my kids school - was known as ‘the school cat’ and was a known stray. It would sleep in the school storage shed in cold weather. A couple of people on the road would feed it if they saw it. It would sometimes let you stroke it, so it wasn’t feral but was clearly living on the streets now.

Anyway, one day at school pick up there was much upset because the cat was clearly in a bad way with 4 or 5 open wounds on its back and one side. No one seemed to know what to do. I spoke to a couple of school staff and they confirmed it was a stray as far as they were concerned. No one else was doing anything so I approached the cat and to my surprise, she allowed me to pick her up. she was very skinny, filthy fur and these wounds.

I put her in my car and called the RSPCA - they were USELESS - said they could collect her but she’d be treated and then returned to the location - to stray presumably. I said no way - she’s obviously HAD home, she’s fairly friendly, she deserves a chance for a home again.

So I took her home with me, and took her to my own vets. They confirmed no chip and very poor condition and infected wounds from a likely fight. They said to me, even if she has an owner, they aren’t caring for her - so if you can give her/find her a home then do so.

So they wormed and flea treated her, have her initial antibiotics with instructions to bring her back in a day or two. I took her home overnight (much to the disgust of my own cat!) and kept her caged with food water and blankets safe and snug in my home. The following day I spoke to school and the deputy head said she’d like to adopt her.

So deputy head got a new cat (she needed ongoing antibiotics for a while but made a full recovery) and the cat got a lovely warm home. Teacher posted and update in the school newsletter for all the kids who were worried about ‘school cat’ and they had a competition for a new name for her. Deputy Head said the cat was so friendly, had taken a few days to relax with her but then turned into a proper lap cat and loved being curled up in the warm on the sofa.

She deserved to have a home and I’m glad I was able to help with that.

I've picked up a stray, but he was very obviously not being cared for by anyone. We'd been seeing him around our street for about a month, he didn't look skinny or underfed but he was absolutely infested with ticks all over his face and in his ears and he had several nasty looking wounds which weren't getting better. Our neighbour put posts on social media to which she didn't get any replies and then we got in touch with a local lady who scans for chips. She brought up a trap and we caught him that day, the chip lady took him up to the local vets and that's the last we heard for a month. She then got back in touch with us and said the vets wanted to know if we would be interested in adopting him. They'd all completely fallen in love with him at the surgery and couldn't bear to send him off to an animal rescue where he's have spent who knows how long waiting for a home. Quite nice really as we wouldn't have been able to adopt from any of the local shelters due to having children under 13!

The snip or PTS… 😬

The snip or PTS…

Oh, sorry, the snip, so hopefully something the owner would have got done before too long anyway, but still obviously an unfortunate misidentification.

Thank goodness for that. I read this as if you'd taken the wrong cat to be pts. 🙀

The UK is simply behind on research in this area (and many others, for that matter). Likely because we don’t have the funding to do the studies needed. Thankfully other countries and organizations have done it though.

“Outdoor domestic cats are a recognized threat to global biodiversity. Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild and continue to adversely impact a wide variety of other species, including those at risk of extinction, such as Piping Plover.

The ecological dangers are so critical that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists domestic cats as one of the world’s worst non-native invasive species.”

“A recent study by the Smithsonian Institution and the US Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats kill about 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion small mammals each year in the lower forty-eight states.”

Same! Glad it was the snip.

I think this thread is showing just how important chipping your cats is. I think I'd rather a well meaning person took an apparent ill cat to the vets, for the vet to check for a chip and find where their home is so they can be returned. The worry is the vet deciding the cat is too ill and pts without the owners knowing.

There was a post on here earlier this year where there was the 'local stray' which all the neighbours said loved living on the street under the cardboard. Except, the OP managed to catch him and get him to the vets and he was really poorly. She linked the FB group that helped him and I can't remember his outcome but it would have been far worse had he just been left on the streets.

It’s unreal-I was reading a story just recently about a cat who was seen in the same place 3 days in a row so these people who were visiting the town thought it must be a stray and took it home (about 200 miles away), after about a year they decided they didn’t want it anymore so gave it to someone else who then took it to vet and discovered it was chipped and belonged to someone….20 months it was away from home and was reunited with its family!

My friends chipped and collar wearing elderly cat got taken twice from her street and taken to the vet to be scanned. Really distressed the cat. He was basically stolen from outside his house.

Before I finally gave up on collars, my pair of reprobates had a habit of taking their collars off and dumping them in other people's gardens! We received several very worried visits from neighbours who found the collars and assumed the worst. (Typed while doing obligatory ear scratches).

I think this is an inherited phenomenon from America. In the US most cats are house cats so a cat on the street is more likely to be a stray. Even over there though it annoys me as most of them are probably just peoples pets but here its downright ridiculous.

We get this loads on our local lost cat page. Cats out there, just catting about and people being freaked out about them wanting to be fed. We had a six dinner Sid with our last boy who would do the rounds stopping at several houses for his dinner. Some cats just like to wonder about. Occasionally the interfering does reunite a lost cat with owners though, and when our cat went missing the army or cat ladies managed to get him back to me so I try to remain positive about people's concern. Luckily here they have a lot of mobile people with scanners so the cats dont get taken to the vet, far away, too often. The proper cat ladies are amazing, but cats do attract a lot of meddling Minnie's as well.

Hmm, I think this can occasionally be tricky. I own cats and like cats - I fully understand that cats roam and I've never intervened re any cats I've seen in the street.

However, about two weeks ago I came across a lovely cat in the street and something just seemed off - she wasn't injured but was terrified and cowering, but at the same time desperate for affection. Maybe she was just a flirt/had had a scare but she almost looked too 'fancy' to be out - like she was a house cat that escaped.

Anyway, I thought about taking her to vets to scan but called my local vet who said their advice was to leave her. I then also knocked on the door of the garden she was cowering in; the lady who lived there said she hadn't seen her before and would message on street Whatsapp/ keep an eye out. I've thought about her a couple of times since - I can't decide whether she was distressed and I didn't help her (which is just awful) or whether I nearly catnapped someone's much loved pet!

Don't get me started on these fuckwits 🤯

My cat officially lives with someone else after they previously stole her and fed her. She was very well looked after and they didn't care. I paid the adoption fee, the insurance, the flea and worm treatment, the hundreds of pounds on accessories etc but who cares eh? I have upset kids. I will never own another cat because humans are too selfish (it's all well and good saying keep them in but most don't want to and will cause havoc to get out). I've also realised how disloyal cats are. Mine was treated amazing but still wasn't good enough because she was being fed human food that's no good for her elsewhere. I don't think cats go missing anymore, I believe 99% just don't want to go home.

I had a house cat who lived sitting at the window, one day a neighbour knocked my door and asked for her cat back. We had had him since he was a tiny kitten and he was very much our cat. She was adamant we had her cat, I even ended up showing her photos of him as a kitten with the kids-I don’t think she ever believed me 🤦‍♀️

Yes, my mother tended to acquire 'strays' in that manner. Strange how it was always her favourite chunky Gingers that 'chose' to be locked in her house for a fortnight and never unneutered and/or sickly/thin actual strays.

Ahem...