I will try to keep this short but I am looking for some honest opinions.
About three years ago, maybe longer, two new sibling cats arrived in the neighbourhood. Sadly soon after that one of them was killed on the road. The remaining cat and our cat became very good friends.
The owners of this cat have a lot of affection for her. They are not neglectful. (They do have a toddler which we do not and they do go away a lot which we do not). We know this because one day I saw the cat with their owner and asked him about his cat (finding out her name etc). This led to us becoming friendly with him and his wife.
As time went on, the cat kept showing up, trying to come in the cat flap and shouting outside/smashing at it. Eventually we asked the neighbours if we could grant her microchip access to our cat flap as she was particularly disturbing us at night. And they agreed.
The cat is now in our house maybe 20 hours out of 23 including sleeping on our bed at night. We are often tempted to ask if we could just have her but that just seems exceedingly cheeky. They can’t get another cat as things stand because their cat doesn’t generally like other cats, only our cat. In any case you don’t just replace a cat like a sofa. If it was the other way round, I’d be devastated with the existing situation let alone want to give the cat up completely. They have the costs of pet ownership but no benefits. In the meantime we have fallen for the cat, just like our cat did.
What, if anything, would you do in this situation?
Its a tale as old as time that a cat lives where it wants but it’s unusual because a) the owners said she could be given access to our house and b) theirs is a perfectly nice home for her, albeit she probably does get more attention with us and we have our cat. And c) they don’t raise it as an issue even though they must have noticed.
Just to confirm we do not intentionally feed the cat (she sometimes eats scraps from the cat bowl).