Help! Neighbour trying to steal my cat!!

random456

It would be nice, as much as I'd love to adopt him, if a call from the vets alerted the owners and they did keep him in. It might make them more aware of his needs. I'll be really sad to see him go, I'm not going to lie. I'm hoping they are nice people when I find them. I'd hate to fall out with them over it. I just want to see him happy and cared for- that's all I ask.

purplepardalis

Well, if a note doesn't work and you go tonthe vets with the story then they will scan for a chip anyway.

Caroline_a

My old cat (before my current one) went missing about 18 months ago. He was around 11, we'd had him since he was a kitten and it was the only time he'd ever gone AWOL apart from 2 days before we had him 'done' when he was young (we think that was a last fling - he came home the day of the op full of ticks and starving!). He was missing for about 6 weeks by which time we'd given up hope, but appeared, slightly slimmer (he was a big boy!), and really pleased to see us.

As he'd always gone outside before, we let him out as usual the following morning, and he came in and out for a week or so. Then he vanished, never to be seen again.

I still wonder where he is, but he was healthy as far as we could see and there were no signs of any cats being hit by cars, etc. The worst part is the not knowing...

MistysKisses

was he chipped? if he was i say NEVER give up hope he still may be reunited with you

Caroline_a wrote: »

My old cat (before my current one) went missing about 18 months ago. He was around 11, we'd had him since he was a kitten and it was the only time he'd ever gone AWOL apart from 2 days before we had him 'done' when he was young (we think that was a last fling - he came home the day of the op full of ticks and starving!). He was missing for about 6 weeks by which time we'd given up hope, but appeared, slightly slimmer (he was a big boy!), and really pleased to see us.

As he'd always gone outside before, we let him out as usual the following morning, and he came in and out for a week or so. Then he vanished, never to be seen again.

I still wonder where he is, but he was healthy as far as we could see and there were no signs of any cats being hit by cars, etc. The worst part is the not knowing...

Caroline_a

Yes he was chipped. I think now that too much time has passed for him to come home now. Where we live there are a lot of large houses on the next road, some of which have been converted into flats, and there are also, further up the road, some sheltered OAP flats.... perfect place for an elderly lady to live who would like a lazy old cat... This is him a few years ago pretending he's drinking from the pond, when in fact he's keeping an eye on the fish!

BitterAndTwisted

Caroline, never EVER give up hope. My darling fluff-bucket went missing and was traced nearly eighteen months later living a life of luxury only 150 yards away despite my having leafleted every flat within half a mile from home. It was chatting to the local kids in the street which finally located her.

I suggest you start leafleting again with that adorable photo on it. If the new family don't want to give him up, the next-door neighbours will almost certainly be aware of his presence somewhere if he's still an outdoor boy and hasn't gone too far away.

Mice_Elf

Definitely don't give up hope. One of my 4 kept straying, but it was only for a couple of days or so. Then he went off & wasn't back the next morning...or that night...or the next morning. All of mine come to a whistle, as I've trained them from kittens, so when this one hadn't returned after a few days, I feared the worst. We were living next to a major road at the time, so my principle concern was that he'd been hit & had crawled into the ditch to die.
However, after 2 weeks & pretty much given up hope of him returning, we received a phone call from a vets nearly 20 miles away. A lady had seen him in her garden & had tried to catch him but he was too fast. He eventually became hungry & weak enough for her to do so, she'd taken him to her vets, they'd scanned him, found his chip & rung us up.
He had been hit crossing the road which had either confused him as to which way he should be going or deterred him from trying to cross again.
He had a fractured back leg, exhaust burns all over his face & had lost his top whiskers. However, we did get him back, so it's always worth hoping.

sophiedellow

Hi Frugalista,

Please can you advise how this turned out? I am having the same problem, the lady letting him in just isn't listening to me. I'm thinking of writing a letter but have no idea what to say. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Sophie

Frugalista

sophiedellow wrote: »

Hi Frugalista,

Please can you advise how this turned out? I am having the same problem, the lady letting him in just isn't listening to me. I'm thinking of writing a letter but have no idea what to say. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Sophie

Hi, Sophie - sorry to hear you are having problems with another "cat-napper" . These horrible selfish people make me sooo mad :mad::mad::mad:. The following were my last two posts .....

Frugalista wrote: »

Hi guys. Was surprised to see this thread pop back up again!

I originally posted back in November last year. As the weather turned colder the cats were staying in more and more, so (when the "prodigal" cat came home) we decided not to let them out again. This wasn't too difficult as they both hate getting wet or cold - and once the snow came they really didn't want to go out that much.

They have a big, squashy, fleece bed by the side of our log-burner and spent (what seemed like) 22 out of 24 hours a day asleep in that :rolleyes:. The rest of the time was spent madly racing around upstairs; playing chase (bouncing off the walls and furniture in the process); having very noisy wrestling bouts and hissy fights; yowling through the bannisters and generally terrorising my dogs :rotfl:.

As the months went by and the weather got a little warmer, they would spend hours in the study with OH. They would lie on a cushion in the window (favourite spot on sunny days) or in an igloo on one of the shelves. Our "wanderer" (always the most demanding of the two) loved to wait until OH went to get a drink, or go to the loo and then get on his desk and flick all his pens, glasses, coins, etc, onto the floor :rotfl:. He would also shred up any writing pads or letters within minutes (not good!), walk across, or lay on, the keyboard (sent a couple of e-mails that way!!) and attack the angle-poise lamp :eek:!! He also insisted on lying across OH's arms whilst he was trying to type/work. The funniest thing was when OH was on the phone talking to his boss - the cat thought OH was talking to him, so kept answering in a very loud Siamese yowl .

By about the end of April the cats were becoming stir crazy and quite destructive. Bear in mind they had aways had free rein for years. Also, the weather was getting hotter and we needed to open windows and doors. So, we decided to let them out again. They both now choose to spend a lot of time indoors - but know we will let them out if they ask. In fact, our "wanderer" will often spend all day asleep in the study and has to be woken up for his dinner. He's in more than his "stay-at-home" brother :T!

And the Neighbour? She flagged me down one day as I drove past her place, about 6 weeks ago. Asked how my boy was - I confess, I lied through my teeth :whistle:when I told her he "had been very ill with digestive troubles and will probably have to be on medication long term - so it's vitally important that he's home every day for his tablets".....:o

She told me that she and her husband had missed not having him around and so had gone out and bought two Siamese of their own (a male and a female) - and are planning to breed them :wall: !!! Her husband had even built a cat pen for them as she "didn't want them crossing the lane because of the tractors - it's such a worry" she said (obviously didn't matter about mine though :mad:) "Your cat is such a naughty, cheeky boy!" She also apologised (so quietly I almost missed it) for trying to take my cat!! "He is so lovely, we wanted to keep him - but our new boy is just like him - you must pop in sometime and meet them both :rolleyes:!!"

So, it appears, alls well that ends well (in this case, anyway). To the people who are still struggling with thieving neighbours - Good Luck and don't give up. Your cat is yours and no-body elses.

Frugalista wrote: »

UPDATE ....... Had a phone call yesterday from the "mad cat lady". As those of you who followed this thread will know she ended up buying two Siamese of her own with the intention of breeding them :eek:.

She has had the male neutered and has allowed him to go regularly out of the house/pen. Apparently, she let him out on Friday morning and he has not come back yet - and she is besides herself with worry (sounds familiar :huh::huh:) so she was ringing to see if I may have spotted him!!

OMG!! I cannot begin to tell you how tempted I was to rip into her and tell her that this was exactly how distraught I was every time my cat spent weeks locked in her house and I didn't know where he was :mad:.

However, as a fellow animal lover and pet owner, I really could relate to her fear that something might have happened to him - and so bit my tounge :silenced: (that was soooo hard!) and promised to keep a lookout for him :cool:.

We did chat about my boy (who is tucked up with his brother in yet another new bed and who now sulks like mad if I make him go outside at all :rotfl:) and she said she hadn't seen him over there for months. Good !!

I do sincerely wish she does get her cat back (she is going to let me know) and just hope that now she she has learnt her lesson :think:.

As the old saying goes "What goes around comes around" .

UPDATE 2011 - Well, her cat did eventually return home (I phoned her regularly to find out ) and so I made a big, big thing about how worrying it all is and how some other person may have taken him in, and don't people consider how worried you are, etc, etc :whistle::D.

She finally got the message :T - unfortunately, she now thinks I'm her best buddy :o. Also, my boy started going back down there :mad: and became friends with her male cat. Apparently they were often seen hunting together around the farm buildings and sunning themselves on the straw bales :wall:. She did promise me that she wouldn't feed him or let him in her house - and I have to believe that she kept to her word as he did come home regularly. She has also phoned me up occasionally to ask me to drive down and fetch him as he is yowling and shouting around her door and windows!!

Just before Christmas she phoned me, sobbing and crying, to say her male cat had been found dead in the lane - they suspected that one of the young farm lads had knocked him down with his car and not noticed. His body was still warm :(. The following day I bought her a bunch of flowers and a card with a Siamese on it and left them on her doorstep.

My boy still goes down there - but is now not welcome :whistle::whistle::silenced::silenced: as he has started bullying her female cat (she did eventually get her spayed :T) and getting quite nasty with her (the cat, not the mad lady). They think he is trying to regain his former territory and "position" in their home. She is still not feeding him or letting him in - and we speak regularly on the phone to track his movements :rotfl:.

My cat is incredibly stubborn (massive understatement) and keeps up his siege on their house. She has admitted that she was wrong to encourage him and we have reached a sort of truce :cool:. She keeps an eye out for him and, if he doesn't come home, I can ring her and see if she has seen him. He stayed home throughout the bad weather and is still coming home, most days, for his food and to sleep.

He is one naughty cat with a huge personality :A - and he remains MY CAT.

loddellbosh

I apologise for hijacking the thread but I found it through Google.

My cat went missing for about a week over Christmas. She had also gone missing throughout the couple of days of snow we had at the beginning of December but came back when it cleared up, so at first we weren't too worried. But once Christmas/Boxing day were over we put up 'missing cat' posters. The day after we put them up we got a phone call, saying she was in the house two doors down.
So we went straight over and collected her. The people in the house are Polish and seemed to ignore a few of our questions/comments, but we assumed they didn't quite understand what we were saying. We asked them not to let her in again and took her back home.
For the first day she was quite aggressive, and desperate to go out, then for the next couple of days she was back to her sweet-natured self but still tried to get out. But for the rest of the time we kept her in (just under two weeks) she was fine - still affectionate and not making any attempts to go out.
When we let her back out again all was good. She loves the outdoors but she was spending a lot of time in the house with us. But a couple of days ago she didn't come in at all. We left it for that day, hoping it was just one of those days where she was too busy playing out. But she didn't come back the next day so my mum went to their house. They took a long time to answer and when they did, my mum claimed the man who lived there was out of breath. They said the cat hadn't been in their house but was asleep in their back garden, and when my mum went round there she was there, but she wasn't sleeping, she was licking herself in that embarrassed sort of way. So she (my mum) said she thought they had our cat in their house and quickly shoved her out when she knocked on the door, and we told her that it was probably just a coincidence.
However, the next day (yesterday) she was missing again, so my sister and I went around to their back garden and looked over the fence to see if she was in there. The garden was empty, but I saw someone through the blinds, and a couple of seconds later we saw our cat coming out of their front garden, which we thought was a little suspicious. She never came back home last night, so today we went around there again. Two of us went to their front door, while two went around the back and looked over the fence. I knocked on their door and they took a long time to answer again, and my mum came around to the front to say she saw them throw/shove the cat out the back door.
When they finally answered my mum told the guy what she had just seen and he looked at her blankly. So she said it a bit more slowly and he mumbled something, so she asked him to get someone else. He replied that he understood what she was saying, and said something about how the cat comes round and they have to let her in because that's what she wants. My mum explained that we asked them not to let her in again and he just shrugged his shoulders and asked what could they do, to which we said don't let her in. He had a bit of an attitude the whole time, and he said something like 'if you don't look after your cat properly...'. My mum told him not to let her in their house again or she'll call the police next time. As soon as she mentioned the police he asked if we'd like him to go and get the cat, but luckily my sister had already got her, so we said no thanks and left.

Anyway, ramble over... what I'm trying to ask is what else can we do? Can we get the police involved if it happens again? Or is there someone else we can get advice from?