Seems we have a cat....

ed67812

...
We are a 2 kid, 3 dog household and in the process of having some work done. We leave our garage door open because the tumble drier is temporarily housed there and the moisture needs to escape.

A cat has moved into the garage about 4 days ago. As soon as I went into the garage from the house, or out of the front door, he'd be there meowing and rubbing his head on me. He has been locked out of the garage for a day but went nowhere, just hung out under our car. It poured down and he just remained.

We checked with cats protection, local vets etc. nobody has reported a similar cat missing. There aren't many houses in our village, everyone knows everyone and he isn't a neighbours. We aren't cat people particularly but are animal people. As we couldn't get him to the vets until the next day, the fact he looked like a kitten and the weather, we let him in the garage in an old dog bed and fed him. We decided to feed him because we thought he would either be microchipped and we'd quickly get him home or he wasn't and it might take a while - we didn't want to not feed him if he was too young to be successfully hunting etc.

Anyhow, he has no microchip, there has been no response to our widely shared Facebook post, there are still no reports of a similar missing cat, there are no posters we have seen in the area and further afield. So we're stuck.......

Vet thinks that he is only 4 months old and shouldn't normally be out of his house. He clearly isn't stray given his condition and has not been neutered. He is a lovely cat and even I will admit he is cute. I'm at a loss how we'll find out where he came from as the old owners couldn't be bothered to get him microchipped. My 3year old girl knows that he is on his holiday with us and that he needs to go back to his mummy soon. However, the longer this goes on the more attached she will get - she got so excited when she saw him. She does love cats.

Cats protection say that they are working through a backlog of cats to re-home and ideally he should stay here until they have capacity.

We have considered keeping him but there are the costs implications of this and issues should the original owners (who on current evidence don't know or care that he is gone) are located.

Anyone got any thoughts on the situation? Any other ideas to trace the owners?

Person_one

Might be worth a try on these sites:

https://www.animalsearchuk.co.uk/search/lost?pictures=true&distance=15&colorExcl=false&order=date

http://www.petslocated.com/found-a-pet-intro.php

I think its also worth trying some of the 'old fashioned' methods as his owners might be older and not online (also the kind of owner that might be perfectly caring and responsible but not really aware of microchipping as an 'essential')

Put an ad in the local paper, and make up some 'found' posters for the post office, local shops, local vets and so on.

OldMotherTucker

Local FB pages?

We have lots of lost and found cat related posts on ours!

no1catman

Not everyone is on facebook - do you have a local streetlife.com?

Otherwise, suggestion about postcards about the cat, in some local shops might be the way to go.
The owners may be on holiday, and the cat escaped from the person who was supposed to be looking after it.

Good luck, and keep us updated with any developments.

suki1964

Cats don't cost much to feed

I agree the jabs and the neutering aren't cheap though, perhaps you can get help from the CPL for that?

I wasn't a cat person, always had dogs. 8 weeks ago I got a wee rescue, around four months old and I'm smitten. He's sprawled out on his homemade tree right now, content as anything

Litter 1.79 from lidl - lasts around 10 days
Pouches 1.69 for 6 days

ed67812

We could afford to keep him, although the total costs of food, insurance, vets check ups, vaccinations etc. Is significant.

Sorry, I dont buy the not aware of microchips argument. Surely this cat should have had his jabs and any very worth their corn would mention it.

He's on a lot of facebook groups.

There aren't any shops within a mile. I'll go for a leaflet drop over the coming week but I have been all around the locality and there are s few posters for missing animals about but not for this little fella.

I'll add him to the websites that you mention. He is on the cats protection site already.

Hopefully somebody will claim him

FreeBear

ed67812 wrote: »

We aren't cat people particularly

You are now :T

Joking aside, not all cats are microchipped - Pretty sure mine isn't, but she never goes out. This one of yours is obviously used to human contact, so is unlikely to be a feral, nor is it likely to have traveled far from its original home.

PasturesNew

To be blunt ... if you keep him and are potentially saving him from dying of starvation/attack this week ... then you don't need to go overboard on all that vet stuff.

Back in my day cats didn't have jabs etc .... we had a cat, he only got seen by a vet once in 10 years - and that was a simple fight he'd got into and had his face ripped off.

You could just see your adoption role as being somebody who gives him a bed and litter and food .... and see how it works out. If he lives, he lives; if he doesn't ... well, you tried your best.

Harsh .... but he's got better odds with you right now "offering him not much" than he has sitting on the driveway alone, cold, unloved.

So don't feel OBLIGED to fork out ad infinitum for the whole of the cat's life, just because you ended up with him. Just do what you can, for now and see how things turn out.

annandale

I agree with the above. There are loads of Facebook groups dedicated to missing animals. That would be my first port of call. Just seen that he's on fb groups.

I had to get one of my cats chipped and neutered because the previous owners didn't and he wasn't a kitten. You can only do your best to try and reunite the kitten with family. Another cat I found was neutered but not chipped and the vet estimated that she

And if long term looking after the cat isn't for you, then hopefully it will be rehomed soon.

annandale

Sorry. My phone won't let me edit posts. One cat I found (at the side of a busy road) was neutered but not chipped and the vet estimated that she was around five. It makes it much harder to get the cat back to its original owners.

My mum found a stray once, he was in terrible condition but he was chipped. His owners lived around two streets away. When she went to take him home they said that he wasn't theirs.

Whether that was the case or not it's also important to keep a chip up to date.

paddypaws101

Cats Protection should neuter him for free as he is a stray which you have been feeding. You may even be able to get help with his initial vaccinations. After that the expense of a cat really is not huge. I have had cats that never went to the vet from one end of the year ( or even decade! ) to another. My food costs are low a I feed mainly raw but some cats will supplement home feeding with mice etc too.