To think you don't just take random cats home?

[cadburyegg]

I'm a cat lover, and recently I've joined a few cat related Facebook groups. Big mistake.

I so often see posts where some kind hearted soul has seen a cat wandering around, and has taken it home. The latest post, last night, I couldn't help comment on. Someone found a cat near to their place of work and took it home, and has decided to keep it for themselves. The cat, from pictures they've posted, doesn't look underweight or injured. It's probably someone's pet.

But most of the comments are along the lines of
"The cat distribution system strikes again!"
"Thank you for being such a lovely person"
"She has found her forever home"

There's often a half hearted attempt to find the owner, but whenever someone suggests taking it to a vet to scan for a chip, suddenly the poster goes quiet.

I'd never just take a random cat home that I saw out and about. AIBU? I see it on the village Facebook groups too, "oh I saw this cat wandering around, does it have a home?" ??

A confident little tabby cat often visits me - gets in through patio door or windows - and I LOVE having a quick smooch with him but he’s fine, not in distress. He just has a busy schedule and I’m on his route and I then send him on his way.

Found paw marks in the butter dish, incidentally…

@DangerousAlchemy that's what I thought. I was shocked. I'd have thought cat sitter goes to the cats house. So yeah, I can see why that happened and my friend was in the wrong to make her mate take in the cat miles away. It's a happy ending really as I was convinced they'd never see the poor little fella again!

Sounds like my DH 🤣

🤣

People definitely do this, I see it in my local village groups all the time too. Some of these cats looks very well looked after and are probably just wanderers or looking for a second breakfast. I keep my cats indoors because I’m terrified someone will steal them 😭😭

Elderly and out for a stroll, I love that 😂

We had this, we had pretty rescue ragdoll cats we got from a rescue place. Tried to keep them inside but they obviously had been outside before so hated being kept in so we eventually let them out. We lived in the middle of a lovely well off pretty small commuter town about half an hour away from London. Our cats were well known in the area as striking to look at and when our son was little they would often escort me pushing him in his buggy for the 5 minute walk along quiet roads into town and when he moved on to his little micro scooter would take their job of supervising him very seriously but as we reached the main part of town they would turn back and go back home or wait to escort us home so most locals knew they were ours. Once we were away for 2 nights but we had a relative popping in twice a day to feed and fuss them. On our last day away we got a call from our vet. A lady on the next road had picked up one of our cats and decided it couldn’t be out as too pretty so taken it to the local vet. Ok fine but this was our local vet where they were registered and they were micro chipped. Vet had scanned them but still decided to put our cat in their cattery until the next day before phoning us. When they did they said they had our cat and we asked why and we said he should never have been picked up. We said I assume you can see our address as the vet was on the next road with the cattery backing on to our road, we could hear the cats from our house it was that close. We said we didn’t ask for our cat to be picked up they knew the cat was ours and the cattery door was on our road could they just let our poor cat out so it could return home 20 meters away. They refused said someone had to pick it up and as it had been in the cattery over night before they phoned us they tried to charge us £60 for the stay!

We live in a cul-de-sac and two of our neighbours have cats, as do we. They are all neutered males and tend to hang around together as they are friendly. Our garden is very popular, I expect because there's a good chance one of ours is around to hang out with.

When doors are open in the summer, the visitors will wander in looking for ours. They might stop off for a nibble at the biscuit bowl or a drink. Ours don't seem to be upset if they do. We chase them back out if we see them, but are not constantly on guard.

It appears that one of ours is a keen visitor too. Again no one seems particularly bothered by it.

I've written this to show how cats can have friends (usually neutered males in my experience. Neutered females are less gregarious). They do visit each other when they have outdoor access and generally can be left to get on with it. They're quite good at finding human friends too - one of ours loves children and can often be found playing with neighbour's kids. However, they are (very) obviously well fed, have loving homes and not at all looking to rehome themselves.

There's an old woman a few doors down from me puts food out for the cats there's 5 that are now feral and sleep in her greenhouse , she's been at this years despite repeatedly being told the damage she's doing . She's now in a coma the cats aren't being fed and rescues are full what she has done is horrendously cruel

My lovely ginger boy went missing for 3 months , my and my then toddler son were devastated.
then he came home! Crying and rubbing all over us. A few days later someone put a post in our local group saying the cat they had rescued had escaped. Complete with a picture of my now very overweight cat. I was livid

How did you respond?

I kicked off, said something along the lines of “you did not rescue this cat, you stole him from a loving home and a small child and should be ashamed of yourself” she replied saying I should have taken better care of him because he was skinny. Which he wasn’t, he was 4.5kg he just wasn’t fat!
then I lost it and called her a ‘cat nonce’ and got banned from the page

cat nonce
Genius 🤣

Cat nonce 🤣🤣 seriously why do people do this, one of mine is quite plump and it's obvious she's getting food elsewhere as she barely eats here. She now has a tracker collar so I can see where she goes but there doesn't seem to be one house particularly so who knows!

Someone rescued my lost cat and took him home. Poor little bugger was sat by the back gate and a stupid passing woman thought he looked lost. Thankfully we got him back after weeks of searching, despite her trying to guilt me into letting her keep him. Don't go round stealing other people's pets if your kids will be upset when they have to hand them back.

We’ve sadly lost sight of what a healthy cat weight is.

People forget they should be lean. We regularly have people from our neighbourhood comment on my cats weight, we removed our phone number from his collar because we kept getting phone calls from people having a go at us. People seem to be pretty crazy over cats.

He's beautiful and perfect. Bloody weirdos expecting you to fatten him up so he can't do regular cat stuff.

You can call out a scan angel to check for a microchip. Also if cat does not look skinny or ill the chances are it has a home. Some kid will be crying and out looking for their pet. Very irresponsible in my view.

The cat i found had no chip, but our vet had a list of lost and found cats

That's awful @NewMrsF !! did you get in touch with them & explain they stole your cat for 3 months?

These sorts of people especially like to pounce on your pedigree cat in the street and reassure themselves that they're doing it a favour. Doing themselves a favour , more like. Common thieves. My ds was heartbroken when his beloved cat was stolen.

Sometimes they do look unhealthy - the one we took in years ago had muscle wastage on rear legs, couldn’t use them properly, scrawny, covered in scabs (fur patches missing) and was indeed covered in fleas. It was eating bird food in neighbours garden. I’d not seen it before and I did take pity and give it some chicken - there’s a farm near us and they have a lot of ferals. Anyway, turns out it was a pet of a multicat household and owners said they were scared of the cat as she bit and scratched, and said she’d soon return home when she realised she was kissed so to keep her for now. Years later and the addition of a dog and the cats still here - had a clean bill of health from vets, has now had vacs (owner had said she never had them previously and she was old when she came to us). She’s friendly and loves sitting on my knee on an evening. Or following us around. She’s free to come and go but she seems happy here. Nice soft thick fur and no fleas apart from this summer - treated straight away - and her skin was no where near as bad as when we took her in. There was no excuse for her body state when we took her in, save for neglect.