People are too accepting of cat theft

[PuttingOnTheKitsch]

This was inspired by a social media post in which someone noticed their cat living in a neighbour's house, and loads of comments agreed that it had happened to them too.

A cat doesn't move into a house unless it is being fed. If you started feeding and keeping a neighbour's dog, people wouldn't be making cheesy comments about the Dog Distribution Service; they would call you a thief, and rightly so.

So why is it ok to do this to a cat, especially when you know it has an owner and you know that it is well-looked after?

Agree. I've been happy when previous cats have visited neighbours but I would be heartbroken if they moved out/were stolen.

Totally agree.

We had a cat in our previous house who kept going AWOL and we asked all the neighbours who denied knowing anything, including woman over the back (same road but a loop).

The woman next door but one knew said lady and told me she had been feeding the cat. So I asked her again. Nope, wasn't her she said.

Fast forward a couple of months with cat barely coming home and she turns up at the door, "Kitty has a tick, she needs to go to the vet"... OK, so the Kitty that you have not been feeding and know nothing about...? Sure. She promises she has not been feeding and just 'noticed' when cat came for a fuss. 🙄

A few weeks after that we put our house on the market, she turns up at the door with her teenage daughter in tears. "We don't want you to move and take Kitty with you. Can we adopt her from you?"

The bloody cheek of them!

It gave me great pleasure to drive past on the day we moved out with the cat box on my lap giving them the royal wave!

Yep, totally agree.

But there are threads on here by people who feed random cats and they all seem to get praised for it

It's the celebration and encouraging of it that gets me and the 'Cat distribution system' there is no distribution system.

There are often photos of perfectly healthy looking cats on our town page with, 'noticed this cat in my garden today, haven't seen it before, does it have a home' - well yes it very likely does have a home and is just swanning around enjoying the weather. But instantly there are calls to'get someone round with a scanner'

DCat has a collar with my phone number printed on it to deter exactly this kind of behaviour. It's hard to claim that a cat is humanless when not only is the cat collared, but he is displaying a globally-unique telephone number that you can use to talk to his human.

Cats aren't exactly expensive and there are zillions in shelters needing homes. If someone is feeding your cat then they are probably concerned that it's not being looked after properly for whatever reason. Why else wouldn't they just get their own?

All the fun, none of the responsibility. If you don’t own the cat there are no litter trays, pet-sitters, vet bills, actual requirement to always have cat food in, etc.

If people let their cats roam, they take the risk that the cat will end up not coming back. It is perfectly reasonable for someone to feed a cat they see wandering around. Even if it looks healthy, they can’t know for certain that the cat has an owner. If the cat ends up staying, the only person at fault is the person who failed to supervise their cat properly.

I feed and let in a cat that has an owner but it's a long long story, he travels half a mile to me at least once a day (he's been here 4 times today) and it was after cats protection scanning and visiting the owners in 2019

He basically doesn't like his home and is shut outside most of the time. I won't leave him outside in winter when he's nowhere to sleep, but the second he asks to leave I let him out even if it's 4am

He even turned up once when he was injured and hurt and let me help him without even hissing at me

At one time our house was cat central for our neighbours cats all would come in eat food occasionally snoozes and then go home, all our neighbours were aware and happy. We eventually adopted one of the cats when our neighbour asked to because he started to fight with the indoor cats. He's fine here now and doesn't visit other houses as he did previously

I get umpteen cats in my garden. I just say hello to them (or chastise them for chasing the birds) and let them go on their merry way.

One of my cats would hang out at my neighbours house as he was friends with her cat. She's told me she's given him treats before but I wouldn't be happy if it was full meals.
My other cat would never let a neighbouring cat come into the house, though a couple seemed desperate at one time or another.
We did semi adopt one ginger tom whos owners just kind of CBA. Weird as it sounds. They just didn't care so my neighbour started feeding him, he started coming round ours, then he was eating our cats food and staying longer. I certainly would never encourage it now.
The thing is some people are obsessed with the idea that every cat not wearing a collar is a stray. Some even remove the collar! I think you do get people who could do with just getting a cat of their own.

My next door neighbour's cat adopted my garden as part of her territory. I figure that the reason that I'm getting so many cats now is that she's getting old and not so able to defend her territory.

She still walks across my back living room window and then jumps over the fence to her own garden. Years back, she'd look in our back window and my (now late) husband would wave to her. She'd pause, dip her head and then continue to go home.

She still looks in the window, but not so much.

I have a cat and also have cats visiting my garden (because DCat is a big softy). They all look healthy and well fed and it's even possible to tell which ones have curfews.

So I fail to understand why would you feed some random cat, unless it looked clearly starved?

Why? What would be the thought process behind "This cat wandering in my garden, that looks perfectly healthy and I know belongs to a neighbour. I think I'll just feed it and steal it".

You may not like cats wandering outside. There I some places that I don't think dogs should be, either, it doesn't justify someone stealing them.

One of mine visits neighbours, she used to nap on a sofa or a bed of one and sunbathes with another. They know she is mine and both helped when she disappeared (locked in somewhere for 3 days because she is nosey and I put flyers through half the town's doors)

One of my cats came to me because he was abandoned when his owners moved and left him. He came in to my house and a neighbours and ate everything in sight. Took a year to trust anyone. Lost him to cancer a after 5 years, he was 7.

Currently have another tom comes in and eats my cats food, I don't feed him. He runs away from me. He empties the bowls of biscuits. That's a hungry cat. If he continues to come and I can get him to trust me I will put a paper collar on him to find an owner.

Some owners have too many animals and not all cats are suited to multi pet households, so they leave. Some cats leave because children are hurting them.

Microchipping is now compulsory in England and Wales so owners need to chip their cats just like their dogs. No chip - that's an owner problem.

It's not reasonable to feed someone else's pet at all. Just because it's out to roam, doesn't mean you can do whatever you like with it - it's not yours.

If you want a cat to feed, go and get your own.

Collars are dangerous and many cats will have them off in seconds.

So while a collar might be a good sign that a cat is owned, not having one is pretty meaningless.

Isn't it a requirement that cats have microchips now? If someone is concerned it's a stray take it to the vet to get scanned. But no it's far easier to just feed it!
One of my cats is outside 80% of the time. She hangs out on people shed roofs (terraced houses most have a shed at the bottom of their gardens). She comes 9/10 times I call her in for food. I'm not going to make her life miserable by keeping her in. My other one is a real homebody. Both are recognised by neighbours though. I gave up on collars because they kept losing them.

That's why I have dogs, they are more loyal. Yes some random stranger can feed them, but they will always recognise you as their human!

Cats on the other hand are celebrated as free spirits with the right to roam. They go where they find the right lifestyle for them.
If you don't like it keep your cat on your property or get a dog.

Just because they have the right to roam doesn't mean they don't have a home and a family.

Maybe all the people who feed cats should go and get their own, rather than taking on the fun without the responsibility 🙄

It is the law @mondaytosunday but I suspect a lot of owners still haven't bothered. Our vet check them every time we go for an appointment but it's not like they can do anything if they're not.

If a cat is starving and you have opportunity to feed it but turn your back and let it go hungry you’re a cunt.

My cat does an excellent impression of being starving.

He has a home, gets four meals a day and is very well looked after.

Our neighbours stole my cat and are doing their best to steal our family cat. Lovely people, absolutely no boundaries - it's absolutely infuriating. They give daily Dreamies to all 8 cats in the neighbourhood and put out cushions and beds for them.

He basically moved out, and despite my best efforts to tempt him back, he was happier having a whole house to himself than living with his brother and a rescue kitten. I was heartbroken, but I loved him very much and if he was happier elsewhere I was prepared to accept that for his own good.

They are now trying the same with our other cat. Not just Dreamies, but sachets of posh food, buying him catnip toys etc. We've sort of Had Words - I explained he was having digestion problems and the vet wanted me to monitor his diet more carefully. They've restricted the snacking a bit now. The endless Dreamies were giving him the runs, it was awful.

So a PSA:

• Most cats don't wear collars.
• Cats lie to you about when they were last fed - one has just come to complain how starving he is and there is food in his bowl.
• Unless it is looking bedraggled and scrawny and a vet has scanned it for a chip, do not feed a cat you don't own.

If a cat tells you it's starving and you feed him, you're a gullible idiot

and you're nicking someone else's pet