Seems we have a cat....

Snuggles

Pop_Up_Pirate wrote: »

The owner may not be aware that the cat is missing.
If the cat is coming back at dinnertime every day, eats its dinner and then goes out again, but is back again each and every day, why would they even consider it missing?

It's other people who 'find' cats who think they are missing.

And sometimes they are. I have reunited two lost cats with their owners in the last 12 months. The first one we discovered sleeping in our cat kennel. I could have ignored it, as you have advised the OP to do, but what I actually did when it kept coming back was check for a microchip (there wasn't one) and then post on Facebook. It turned out it had been missing for two weeks having got out after the owners had just moved house.

The second one we noticed suddenly hanging around with our cats. Again it kept coming back and seemed very hungry. We again checked for a chip (there wasn't one), and again through Facebook found its owners in a village some distance away, from where it had gone missing a month earlier.

Cats do go missing and far too many are abandoned by people who decide they don't fit in with their lifestyle anymore.

The fact is that if the owner of the cat in the OPs case had bothered to have it microchipped, this would have been resolved by now whether the cat is actually "missing" or not.

annandale

Why should the Op leave the cat alone? Should she leave it to starve?

You don't know that it's going home to eat. Every cat that I've rescued has been a stray or dumped.

A four month kitten is hardly likely to be wandering between houses. Far more likely to have got out accidentally and be missing.

rach_k

OP, if there's a possibility that the cat is going home during the night or another time when you're not around, could you put a little note on its collar? If it doesn't have one, supermarkets sell them cheaply. For a couple of pounds, you can at least rule out the idea that it has a loving home but comes to you for extra food/attention.

mellymoo74

Both sides
Pickle was a pregnant 3/4 month old kitten when she showed up at the end of March last year

We fed her and dithered for a week before caving and giving her her own way (rehoused her with a lovely old couple but she kept coming home) and moving her in.

Tomcat has another house, his collar has my number on it, me and his other mum swap pics and Tom related anecdotes since she called me before Christmas. He has been popping into his other home a couple of times a week for years lol.

Pollycat

I remember the 'Pickle' saga, Melly.

Many years ago we lived near some senior citizens' bungalows.
One of our cats had a 'home' with an old couple.
As we went off to work, we'd see him sitting on the wall waiting for them to let him in.
Old chap used to buy him fish off-cuts from the local Co-op as a treat.
They had the benefits of 'having' a cat but without all the expense & responsibility.

It worked for us all, especially the cat.