Neighbour stealing my cat and I think I need a tracker

[Theobaldsmum]

I live in a quiet suburban street in North London where all the houses have big gardens and my cats have always roamed freely with no collars. I am worried about the risk to my cats with a collar, but now it seems I need one or some sort of tracker as my cat is often gone for long periods of time and a few nights he has been gone all night. He is housewarm when he comes back in the morning which means he must be in someone’s house😡I am so annoyed I now have to put a collar on him and also potentially spend money on a tracker. Has anyone else had this issue? How did you handle it? I mean neighbours keeping your cat all night. I don’t know who they are by the way or I would have knocked.

Pawfit have just brought out a cat tracker, it notifies you if it is removed.
It may be that your cat is just finding an open window somewhere rather than being kept in by somebody. I frequently come home to find my neighbour's cat waiting for me after he has eaten my cats food.

I just let the neighbour know where to look for him if he's missing.

I read this thread and could’ve sworn it was my house your cat was in. Thankfully I’m at the other side of the UK. We have a beautiful, well tended and groomed cat who often makes her way through our cat flap at around midnight every night. We have had to resort to a cat cam, continual removal (despite how friendly she is) and empty food bowls throughout the night with only water available for ours. We know for sure she has a home because of how well cared for she is (no fleas, very social, long haired and immaculate!) we have appealed on social media to find out who she belongs to and make them aware of what’s happening but unfortunately no one has come forward. My own cats need access inside and out 24 hours a day so we just have to keep putting her back outside.

I hope the issue with your cat is resolved asap! It must be so frustrating.

I think there's a big difference between perhaps stroking a cat, maybe even giving it a random snack... and feeding it regularly, taking it into your home, and letting it sleep inside when it is CLEARLY well fed, and someone's cat (I.e., not a stray).

I think people who do this, and effectively 'steal' someone else's cat(s) are scum.

You're basically getting all the cat benefits, but will no doubt allow the insurance/vet bills to fall on the original owner. I highly doubt you're putting a collar on it , sending it home with a note saying "we love this cat, we've strongly bonded with it, could we maybe have a discussion about taking it on officially?"... no, you're seducing a cat. It's no different than a woman, seducing a married man until he leaves (or man with a woman).

Unpopular opinion.

I have got a tracker arriving today so first we’ll see if he will accept it. I have a feeling he will get pissed off having to wear one.

This is one of the risks of letting your cat out to roam, unfortunately. You can’t control where they go or what happens to them when they go off your property.

And I say that as someone with three cats who all go outside btw. One of mine goes to the neighbours and she sends us photos of him curled up on her sofa with her and her dog 🤣

Ultimately you can’t control the behaviour of other people and it’s not illegal for cats to wander into other people’s homes.

You can’t really stop it even if you know where he’s going. People are weird about cats

Agree with you and he is not street wise at all and I am so worried they will put him out on the side facing the street not knowing that he only plays in the gardens. He has never been on that side (I am pretty sure, let’s see what the tracker will tell me)).

He is also quite shy and avoids people he doesn’t know, so they must have made some effort with him. He would go into peoples houses and is scared to cross the neighbours garden if they are outside gardening.

I mean he would not go into peoples houses.

I know the risk of letting cats roam, but I don’t accept that I should have to put up with people keeping my cat in overnight when I am out looking for him wondering where he is and if something bad has happened. If he spent a few hours at another house I wouldn’t mind, it’s the overnight or until late evening I mind. Anyway, the tracker has arrived!

I put an AirTag on a collar on my cat because she kept going awol for days on end. I could see that she was repeatedly going to the same house so I went and knocked and asked if my cat was there. Was told she was asleep upstairs on their bed. I had to ask them to not let her in and to absolutely not feed her.

I’m not saying the neighbours are doing the right thing - just that you can’t stop them unfortunately. Even with a tracker they can just take it off and dump the collar somewhere.

I once had a cat who used to let himself in, sleep in the spare room and let himself out in the morning. Not my cat and not encouraged. I only found out because I shut the room door one night and he howled in the morning. Made me wonder if he’d done it before and when I check the cameras he’d been doing it every night for as far back as the footage went. Just saying, your neighbours might not actually be doing anything at all. I locked the cat flap after that but it had never occurred to me that I’d need to before that.

Somebody (who's cat had a tracker on it) did come round ringing doorbells after midnight in our block of flats, he thought the cat was in the building somewhere. This cat is always in our communal gardens, nobody encourages it or lets it indoors. The sense of entitlement knocking people up at that hour is astonishing.

🤷🏽‍♀️ the only way to truly stop this is to keep your cat inside.

You can insist on your cats right to roam, you can put a collar & tracker on your cat and you can even call out your neighbour.

But it's up to you to ensure that your cat stays with you if that's what you want.

You can't control other people's behaviour, however much you would like to do so.

However it may still well not be deliberate, and you could also argue that cats wandering into other people's houses, potentially causing damage is not the fault of the property owner, but the cat owner.
I have 11 cats, so food is constantly available, I'm certainly not going to start restricting my animals by lifting up food because of an interloper!
I also lock the cat flap at night, but not if one of mine is still out.
The cat isn't encouraged, other than he finds a warm space and food, it really is the neighbours issue if he has a problem, as it is he is quite happy as the cat fights with the other cats he has and he knows where it is.
The fact that the OPs cat is wary of strangers suggests he has possibly been chased off, and Im not sure I'd be comfortable with a cat that isn't streetwise out anyway. Cat proofing a garden solves these issues.
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Yep, we’ve had cats let themselves in to our house before. They were there a good while before anyone noticed!

You could put a note on a collar asking people to say hello to your cat but not feed him or let him inside.

I'm with you, OP.

DCat1 is very friendly and people adore her. As a result, she's often 'treated' to food and snacks in neighbouring houses, and has been known to nap on someone else's sofa etc.

It seems I can politely instruct our neighbours not to encourage her or feed her until I'm blue in the face -a few of them carry on regardless and, distressingly, DCat1 is now quite overweight, despite being on a vet prescribed, calorie controlled diet at home. "But she comes trotting up the path when I get back from work and just gives me those eyes, how can I refuse her?" and so on. Simple. It's not your cat.

I'm relieved none of my neighbours, who are actually decent people, are as dangerously conceited as @MascaraAndMintyChocolate and believes themselves to be 'chosen' -pathetic.

This has made me laugh so much. The second photo! 🤣🤣🤣

By the look of it, it would appear you’re actually living in their home @Grumpyoldpersonwithcats. How rude of you…😁

Are you certain about that? Cats can be extremely persistent even when not encouraged.

We have catflaps that control entry by microchip, so in theory no other cats can come in.

But there's two neighbourhood cats that are persistently breaking in by hooking a claw round the edge and pulling the flap out and getting in that way. They're healthy and well fed so unlikely to be strays.

Yet they are in our house most nights such that we've now had to remove the food that our cats are used to having free access to so there's nothing for them to come in for their midnight snacks.

We got the microchip cat flaps because we had several cats coming in, there was one that we sent away several times a day, we started taking him back home to make clear we weren't encouraging him.

Thank you.
The cat in the second photo had five threads devoted to him. He spent the best part of 6 years trying to break into our house on a daily basis
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/mumsnet_classics/3564597-Next-doors-thug-cat
As soon as he was exiled to Scotland, the cat in the first picture turned up.
I think my house is some sort of cat Nirvana 😹

I am reasonable sure as neighbours on both side leave patio doors open and he has never gone into their houses or even near. He keeps himself to himself. He has got a large area to roam. I live in an area with large garden many with lots of big trees and you can’t really get out onto a road unless really making an effort, like roaming very far or being out out on the street side of the houses. It’s London, but think sleepy surbub.

When you find out which neighbour it is go and tell them he's on a specialist vet diet and he's not to be fed.

My neighbours did this and I ended up having to rehome the cat as he was only coming home occasionally for food and then leaving again immediately. It was so stressful as we sometimes wouldn’t see him for days at a time. He now lives with my brother and sister-in-law so I get to see him when I visit them.