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.

They will find out if he’s chipped. It’s unlikely as we have a true neighborhood stray that also lives in our bushes and they have similar markings. (They real stray has been pictured several times and is truly a stray not the fake ones that wander home) This one was really too little to be on a walkabout from home. Think about 5-6 weeks.

But yes absolutely adorable and if I had room (we already have 4!) I would have kept him!

Clearly we have found the person who is helping all of these cats!

No this little guy is exactly where he needs to be. He’ll be in the rescue for 7 days until they can get him healthy and legally take ownership. Then he’ll be featured for adoption. He may go into foster care if he’s not old enough for spay/neutering. His cage during this time will not be glamorous or exciting.

The last time I went to adopt a kitten it took me 3 months to find one from our rescues… they typically are adopted within 24 hours of being posted the competition is fierce. Yes being in a small cage and a car ride sucks as will the next week in quarantine. But so does sleeping in the snow with coyotes on the hunt.

so yes thank you for pointing out I made this cat’s day suck… but I’d do it all again to give him a chance at life.

That happened to my friend's dog. He was sitting on their brick fence and someone took him to the pound!!

Saw a local group FB post recently where a tourist joined to report that she had seen a cat outside and was very concerned for its welfare. When people asked what the problem was, she eventually said that she had never seen a cat outside, and in her country they lived indoors....

I have taken a cat to be scanned before – it was howling outside our door in the night, was a posh breed and had matted fur. Opened the door and it ran in and made itself at home. Gave it a good while to bugger off and didn't feed it, but it wouldn't go. Assumed it was daft and had got lost, or used to live here. Turned out it lived a few streets away and was simply looking for some sucker to give it a new, peaceful home away from a newborn baby. (If any cats are reading this, howling outside doors at 3am is a great way to find indulgent cat-loving soppy fuckers.)

Our local fb page is full of people posting pics of cats that have come to their house/garden.....and people who have lost cats (prob because some "kindly" person has taken it inside/to the vet)
I'm impressed how far some of the cats go though some are well known all over the town.
Person : this cat has turned up in my garden
Everyone else : oh that is Bob he lives at....

Oh I know, they're on our local Fb pages all the time.

We had one the other week that took one to the weekend emergency vet that's 15 miles away and leave it there.

Our local page is nuts! Even just a picture of a cat on the street, and our local cat rescue starts posting “can you catch her? We’ll come and pick her up”. It’s just out for a walk, doing regular cat stuff FFS!

We have this where i live. One of my cats actually died because a lady would not stop feeding her. She sat outside the ladies house all day on the hottest day of the year last year. When she eventually staggered back i had to take her to the vet as she could barely walk. She was 13 and had kidney failure due to dehydration and had to be out down. There is also a lady who lives behind me that had one of my cats. She is horrible and abusive to me and wont stop taking my cat in. She also tried taking one of my other cats , she terrified him by locking him in her shed and chasing him , i had to rehome him at my daughters and he is now a house cat who it to terrified to go out. Shes done it to so many cats around here. My neighbout had to rehome one of hers as well. Its ridiculous. All the fb post about ‘lost ‘ cats. Its infuriates me.

They have no experience of cats

There’s a woman on Next Door who takes photos of (ordinary, healthy) cats outside and asks if they are lost. It started off with people saying what a good person she is but now she gets a load of people telling her to stop bothering cats who are going about their day.

She has a bit of a bee in her bonnet about how any cat that is allowed outside is neglected or abused.

These ppl drive me insane. Why don't they their own cat, there's plenty need adopting in shelters.

*get their own cat

Sometimes those cats are actually lost. A cat got into our garden and was quite loud and not looking very happy. I posted his photo on the local Facebook group and his owner replied straight away. The cat has been missing for 2 weeks, lived 30 minutes away (next town) amd must have jumped in someone's car to get to our garden.

I often think people would mistake one of ours for a stray. Tiny, skinny and scared of people and without a collar.

I wish she'd wear a collar, I really do. It would help if she ever got in to trouble or did get lost with her wandering, as well as being able to put bells on it to lessen the risk of mouse/rat/bird/squirrel/glis glis catching, but the little bugger can remove a quick release collar than it takes me to put it on her!

YANBU OP. The majority of the posts in our local group are OK - "I've seen this cat a lot lately - looks healthy, but I've never seen it before and just want to check it's not lost" but leaving it in their garden, not feeding it, etc.

Thankfully most people seem sensible and aren't (effectively) kidcatnapping cats off the street that are clearly just out for a stroll!

@Daisyblue77 Someone should lock her in a shed and see how she feels about it.

A random woman who's bungalow backs onto my very large garden once took my cat to the vets to get spayed.. she walked into my house shaved.. l rang all the vets in Wakefield to find out what had happened.. and found out she claimed her to be her cat.. it was only when the vet went to operate he realised she had already been spayed and the woman admitted she wasn't really her cat but one she kept seeing and hoping to keep.
This was many years ago and unfortunately the cat has now died. I now have a 5 month old cat.. he hasn't been out yet.. I'm waiting until the spring and l will sit in the back garden with him.

Cats should be in their natural habitat not in a zoo.

It's not cats roaming about in woods catching woodland birds, FFS, it's people cutting woodlands down that affects the population size.

This drives me nuts! I was absolutely blasted on FB last winter for telling one woman to put the cat back outside and stop feeding it. The cat was sat by her fire eating Sainsbury finest smokes salmon. Kitty was very happy, and the finder 'didn't have the heart to put her outside in the cold', but was in no way encouraging her. It was 10 degress and kitty had a fine fur coat.
Mean while kitty's elderly owner, not on FB was frantically looking for her. I was accused of insinuating that the finder was trying to cat nap it, and being cruel to animals by insisting it would be fine outside and would go home if it was cold/hungry. 🙄

One time we did keep our cat in until later in the evening was when he was catching bats as they emerged sleepily from their roost.

But even though bats are protected there are about three million pipistrelles in the UK.

Cats should be in their natural habitat not in a zoo

🤣 I think a cats ^natural habit" is a farm type environment with lots of outdoor space, shrubbery and some accessible outbuildings with plenty of mice to hunt.
Not suburbia with small back gardens, where they have to compete with 8 other cats for the last 3 sparrows.

I live in the countryside but there are lots of houses, back gardens and sparrows as well as a shit ton of mice.

The sparrow population has increased recently, they are plentiful and not endangered.

They didn't decline from 1979 because of cats but because of loss of habitat.

I see this all the time on my Facebook page! Just because the cats in your garden doesn't mean it's lost and starving. It worries me a bit as we have a couple of community cats who live in the back gardens here (their mum had a litter and when they were a few months old she sadly died) me and my neighbours take care of them between us, I trapped and neutered them and we make sure they are fed etc, they'll even come over for a scratch and play if they're in the mood at times. They aren't chipped though so if someone nabs them they'd never be returned to their home and they're happy here.

We have a lovely big bushy type tree in our front garden.

There used to be a colony of house sparrows, you could hear them chirping away all day long. Sadly our old neighbours moved, new ones have 2 cats, and within a few months all the birds were gone.

Nothing else changed, just some stupid cats sitting all day in our tree scaring away the birds.

So you can argue that its due to humans that we loose our song birds, but cats are an issue nevertheless! (And humans introduced them...)

Cats introduced themselves, to humans.