How do you recognise a stray?

[MrTiddlesTheCat]

We've had a young cat hanging around our garden, crying for a few days now. Yesterday I saw it trying to eat old, wet bird seed from under the feeders.,. It seemed so desperate that I put some biscuits out, which it wolfed down, clearly very, very hungry. So now it's moved itself in and is asleep on the swingseat with my cat.

I don't want to feed someone else's pet, but I also don't want to ignore one that needs help. I've put pictures on the village's lost pets FB page, but no joy. DH has knocked on all the neighbours, but nobody recognises it. We've even scanned it but it has no chip, which is a legal requirement here.

Should I continue to feed it? And I what point do I get to say I have another cat?

We had a similar story, unchipped and intact male, six dinner sid type, ever so friendly. Owned by a daft, useless woman a few streets over. She kept saying she would get him fixed, but didn't. This went on for months. He stopped coming round for a while, then turned up with an old, nasty injury, limping etc. The owner just didn't want to know. We bundled him up and took him to an emergency vet as a stray. They fixed him up and worked with a charity to help him get adopted. Cat owners like this make me so angry.

And for the third time he's back. Still unchipped and unneutered. I messaged the owner on Tuesday to say he was around. She was 'oh great, we've been looking everywhere'. Clearly not as you haven't been to 1 place you know he goes to. 4 days on and he's still here and not a peep from his owners.

So I'm booking him in at the vets and once he's chipped and registered I'll tell them, if they turn up, that I only have my cats here (my two old ones and my new one)

Congratulations on your new cat 😉

We trapped a stray we had been feeding for a while and taken a shine too. It turned out he had been missing nearly a year.

He went back to the owners who weren't far away and didn't seem sure how he would settle back with their other cat. They were asked to keep him in for 2 weeks.

3 days later he turned up back in our garden again and we thought we had a new cat.

He did make his on way home the next day though - I like to think he came to say goodbye to us in his own terms.....