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The litter tray

Join our community of cat lovers on the Mumsnet Cat forum for kitten advice and help with cat behaviour.

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Original poster

We have been adopted

57 replies

SummerLovin2022 · 07/01/2022 10:07

Last year my daughters found a kitten stuck up a tree and brought her home. She had a collar and was probably about 5 to 6 months old. I told the girls that they needed to bring the cat back to where they found her and see if somebody was looking for her. As it turns out a a neighbour close to where they found her recognised her and told the girls where she lived. They dropped her back to the garden as there was no answer on the door and the neighbour told them she was always out and about and that she would be fine in the garden. We didn't see her again until last September when she appeared in our garden. The children petted her and gave her some ham and she went on her way. I seen her a few times near our house but she didn't come in. A couple of weeks later she arrived in our back garden. Again we brought her back. This happened all week but she kept coming back. It was very cold one night so we let her in and fed her. We have put notes in the owners door that we have her but have not heard back from them. We are happy to keep her and she seems so happy here. I'm just worried she will go back to her original home and it will devastate the children. She has been with us nearly 4 months now. We wormed her and gave her a flea treatment. She is booked in for top up vaccinations in a couple of weeks. Sometimes I feel like we have stole her but we have tried to bring her back home many times.

OP posts:

Winniemarysarah · 08/01/2022 14:55

@Undeciciveb Isn’t it bizarre? Its quite easy to avoid stealing an animal by not taking it in the first place. By this reasoning I could steal most of the cats in my neighbourhood. So if I take a cat off the street x amount of times and the owner doesn’t answer the door when I knock and demand that they keep it in the house, then that makes it mine?

Original poster

SummerLovin2022 · 09/01/2022 14:40

Didn't steal her. I suppose I should have turfed out on Halloween night too when she was at my house. You all sound so ridiculous and cruel.

OP posts:

Original poster

SummerLovin2022 · 09/01/2022 14:41

Her

OP posts:

fairylightsandwaxmelts · 09/01/2022 14:45

@SummerLovin2022

Didn't steal her. I suppose I should have turfed out on Halloween night too when she was at my house. You all sound so ridiculous and cruel.

Of course you should have - she's not your cat to keep! It's not cruel to turf her out - her owners have let her out to roam - it's not your business or job to decide she should be inside somewhere!

She has a home - you know she has a home, so stop letting her in your house and feeding her. It's theft. She is not your cat.

If you want a cat, go to a shelter and adopt one of the thousands of cats there who are looking for homes - don't just take someone else's pet!

eagerlywaitingfor · 09/01/2022 14:49

[quote Winniemarysarah]@Undeciciveb Isn’t it bizarre? Its quite easy to avoid stealing an animal by not taking it in the first place. By this reasoning I could steal most of the cats in my neighbourhood. So if I take a cat off the street x amount of times and the owner doesn’t answer the door when I knock and demand that they keep it in the house, then that makes it mine?[/quote]
The thing is... that this isn't deliberately taking the cat off the street and keeping it in your house. That is not what the OP has done.

Cats will ultimately decide on where and with whom they want to live. If they are outdoor cats then they alone will choose their slave human household (sometimes more than one).

Caramellatteplease · 09/01/2022 14:50

Didn't steal her. I suppose I should have turfed out on Halloween night too when she was at my house

The cat should not have been in your house in the first place.

Oh course you have stolen it!. You've fed it food that not only is bad for it but that it probably likes more than any of the healthy normal cat food.

My poor DD was on the receiving end of this when our DCat was little.

Teach your children some decent values. Get your own cat.

SummerLovin2022 · 09/01/2022 15:00

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

fairylightsandwaxmelts · 09/01/2022 15:26

Cats will ultimately decide on where and with whom they want to live. If they are outdoor cats then they alone will choose their slave human household (sometimes more than one).

But they can only go into other people's homes and get fed if other people let them in and feed them. We had a cat get into our house once - he just got turfed out and we made sure we kept the window closed in future. It's really not difficult to stop yourself taking someone else's cat!

littlbrowndog · 09/01/2022 22:38

@thecatneuterer

The most important thing is to make sure she's neutered. The original owners are obviously not bothered in the slightest. Cats are abandoned all the time! Really it's incredibly common. They haven't replied to notes and they haven't chipped. They don't care.

This also means that they won't have neutered and she will be getting pregnant very soon. You need to get her neutered.

This is what is true

Pudmyboy · 11/01/2022 23:28

OP you will get flamed for your action here, but from what you describe it does sound like the cat wasn't being looked after, if the original owners never made any effort to contact you regarding the cat. I believe Thecatneuterer works with rescue cats so I would take heart from their post.

Pixiedust1234 · 12/01/2022 00:03

If they are not replying to your notes then maybe your neighbour has told you the wrong house. Try putting posters up in that street and around it. We all know from MN posters that notes gets thrown away instead of passing on to the right person.

I have lots of cats visit my garden but one was very persistent last year....after eight months I got cp involved. Turns out the cat lived two streets away but when we returned her she ran away again. Ended up in our garden again. Poor thing ended up with the disease which means she can only be an indoor cat now. Wish I had listened to my gut that she was homeless/hated her home rather than others saying she had a home...as she wasn't skinny or flearidden despite me seeing her trying to eat fallen pears.

Make posters, do fb posts, contact cats protection and local vets. If you get no leads then congrats on being adopted

Pudmyboy · 12/01/2022 23:48

If they are not replying to your notes then maybe your neighbour has told you the wrong house.
Fair point Pixiedust

minipie · 12/01/2022 23:55

If they are not replying to your notes then maybe your neighbour has told you the wrong house.

I was going to say this! You’ve only got the neighbour’s say so that that’s where the cat lives. Neighbour could well be wrong and that’s why you’ve had no reply.

As the owner of a wandering cat I am very much in the camp of, you don’t feed or let in other people’s cats. And you certainly don’t reckon they’ve “chosen you” just because you fed them ham and unsurprisingly they came back for more .

SpringDaisies · 14/01/2022 06:18

@SummerLovin2022 I feel you’ve had a rough time on here. It feels like a lot of posters have put themselves in the shoes of the cat owner, and giving them the same feelings and behaviours they (the posters) have towards their own wandering cats, when there is no evidence to suggest this cat is well cared for - especially the lack of microchip.

I would keep doing what you are doing - leaving more notes at the owner’s home and making sure he is advertised as a missing cat on Facebook and at the Vet’s. If the owners are worried, they will check those places. If they are not worried or are bad owners, then they won’t.

Frankly, it sounds like you are very catering and responsible. My DCat is microchipped, neutered, has a regular vet appt/update, all up to date with vaccinations, has pet insurance etc. if he went wandering or was lost, I’d be desperately missing him and advertising for him. If someone found him, it wouldn’t take long to find out that he belonged to me. This doesn’t seem to be the case here.

SpringDaisies · 14/01/2022 06:22

I’ll also add - it is especially responsible of you to check his desexing-status. Like most of us, I have seen cats as young as 3 months get pregnant, and male cats only slightly older be responsible for hundreds of kittens.

It may be ‘overstepping the mark’, but having to euthanise unwanted kittens, or find young wild mother cats and her kittens starving to death, gives you a different perspective on the lives you could save.

Dogscanteatonions · 14/01/2022 06:32

You haven't been adopted you've fucking stolen someone else's pet.

thecatneuterer · 14/01/2022 12:09

@SpringDaisies

Exactly this.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 14/01/2022 13:02

Yes.

So much naivety on this thread and posters who moralise about 'stealing' but seem to be blind to the fact that this cat is neglected.

Toomuch2do · 14/01/2022 13:10

I would wonder if the cat did actually belong to that house or someone else. You only have the neighbour’s word for it.

They may have their cat asleep on their lap and wonder why you keep leaving them notes .

Do you have a local Fb page you could ask on?

MenopauseSucks · 14/01/2022 13:46

Leaflet the whole street - a photo of the cat, probable name plus your number - just in case the neighbour has got the house wrong.

Beamur · 14/01/2022 13:58

Where are all the street notices and enquiries from the actual owner of this cat?

thecatneuterer · 14/01/2022 14:02

Actually there is a much simpler way to find out if a cat has an owner. If there is no microchip then the next stage is to put a paper collar with a message, or even a normal collar with a note attached on the cat. Any owner who gives any sort of shit would respond.

However the chances are that the neighbours are correct and the kitten/cat has been abandoned or is simply not cared for. Yes of course checks should always be made, but many, many cats are abandoned/thrown out/neglected and it's so dangerous to cat welfare in general if everyone automatically assumes that cats have caring owners and that legal ownership is the most important factor above all other aspects of cat welfare.

It's easy to assume if you live somewhere where all cats tend to be well looked after, and if all the people you know look after their cats well, that it's like that everywhere, and all cat owners are the same. But it isn't, and they're not.

Fluffycloudland77 · 14/01/2022 14:32

People throw cats out to fend for themselves and if 5hey can’t and we don’t they die.

Mine would last 5 minutes out there so she’d need feeding.

Pudmyboy · 14/01/2022 20:06

@thecatneuterer I love your posts, you really centre the cat and it's needs in them
@SummerLovin2022 how are things with you?

Caramellatteplease · 14/01/2022 23:30

@thecatneuterer

I remember my poor cat as a child. She was a outgoing bright gregarious cat. Some "kindly" souls thought this poor lost stray needed some care and "looked starved". They did the "responsible" thing and took her to the vet for neutering. The vet managed to miss the signs she was already neutered and put her through the start of a second op. before they realised . Turned out this "kindly" couple had found my cat literally at the footpath at the bottom of my garden not long after a good bowl of cat food. Neither lost nor hungry . mY cat went through a fair amount of trauma because someone tried to neuter a cat that wasn't theirs.

You're right in that microchiping mmakes his kind of thing easier. However you're comment on collars seems hopelessly naive. My current cat will not keep a collar on. He can get it them off easily within 5 mins of wrestling it on. A note stands no chance of staying in a collar.

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