I am one of those terrible people much complained of (rightly) - we inadvertently 'stole' a cat from down the road, and now he spends almost all his time at our house. Every time I see his 'real' owner I ask her if he ever comes back to her house; she says she sees him sometimes.
The reason he started coming to our house a lot was because he was always closed out of his own house, and there's no catflap. He used to wait for my DH to come back from the school run and then appear! After about a year, he started appearing first thing in the morning in our garden and like idiots, we started putting some dry food outside in a bowl for him. At that stage we didn't know where he actually he lived. About two years ago, we figured out whose cat he was and his owner came round with a cat basket and took him home. I thought she would perhaps keep him indoors until he got used to being back there, but no, 48 hours later he was back on our doorstep. Then my mum died and I really took my eye off the ball. Squatter cat started coming in through a ground floor window (barred, but he could squeezze through the bars) and the rest is history. I do feel very guilty about it. Is there any way at all that we could actually rehome him back with his original owner? The issue in the first place seemed to be that he was left shut out for long periods, and also they had a large and scary looking dog. However, the dog seems to have gone now. Is there any way I could persuade the cat to go oback home? We love him, but he's not our cat!