How long do you wait for a cat to be claimed

anchorage40

Hi there,
I'm new to this forum but am looking for advice.
A cat wandered into the garden/house on Saturday night as we were having a bbq. She is very sweet, collarless and quite young (probably less than a year). We played with it but ultimately it was getting late so I scooped her up and went to a house down the road which has a black and white cat - assuming it was theirs. They responded, "For the millionth time, it's not ours". Turns out this cat has been all over local facebook groups for over a week as it is ownerless. As we walked away, a very similar cat (small, black and white with no collar) ran past and tried to get up the stairs into the garden/terrace.

So we went and bought some cat food and she wolfed it down. I didn't have the heart to turf her out so she stayed in the house and slept on the sofa.
The next day we went to the vets to have her scanned for a microchip, which she didn't have. We've put up posters, enquired at the local shops in the village (who all knew of her), called local vets, cats protection and the spca and registered her on lost pet websites. Somebody else tried the paper collar approach but after a few days there was no response.

We're doing everything we can to find her owners, she's staying in the house and seems quite happy. However, she's such a good soul, if we can't find her owners we want to adopt her (microchip, check whether she has been spayed, vaccinations etc.)

How long do we wait - we were thinking of 3-4 weeks? Is there anything else we should be doing?
Any help would be appreciated

Artytarty

I'd say in a couple of weeks you could register her with your vet for inoculations and a microchip.
It can be frustrating, you want to find the owner and reunite them but the longer it goes on the more fond you become I become of the cat!
I recently reunited a black stray and it's owner only for it to take off again and come back here. He's still about and we have all come a sort of agreement to let things stay as they are.
Sounds like you have hit the kitten jackpot- I've acquired a hard to love mini beast of Bodmin mood type creature!

anchorage40

Thank you, it's so difficult.
It's hard for me, and I'm an adult, when the kids heard no one was claiming her, it was like a million Christmases. I'll keep looking and asking and maybe someone will claim her. Preferably sooner rather than later.

Money_maker

Local FB groups?

anchorage40

There have been posts up across all the local groups for over a week now. No one seems to know anything It's a small village so word travels quite quickly if somebody wasn't on facebook. It's really weird

trickydicky802

I'm not convinced cats have owners, merely people they choose to adopt!

A friend moved house a few years ago. They'd had their family cat for about 10 years or so. When they went back to where they used to live to visit some friends they noticed 'missing' posters on the lamp posts with a photo of their family cat.

Long story short, it turned out that 'their' cat had also been the family cat of one of their neighbours. Amusingly, this also explained why 'their' cat sometimes stayed out all night and why it had recovered from an illness just before they were going to take it to the vet . . . their neighbour had taken it to the vet before they did!

In the end, they decided to let the neighbour keep the cat because their own kids had left home but the neighbour's kids were still at home and would have been upset losing 'their' family cat.

Funny old world!

MovingForwards

How about putting posters up / Facebook notices in surrounding villages just in case she enjoys a good stroll?

If no response to that after a week, you have a young cat

RuthnJasper

Sounds to me like you have done all that a reasonable, responsible person could be expected to in the circumstances. I'm sure that there are others who would be satisfied in having done less.

Hope all turns out well for all parties. Bless you for taking the time and effort to help an innocent young animal. x

Fire_Fox

I would not assume your furry charge is local: young cats are very inquisitive, can stowaway in vehicles and get carried many miles from home. So do advertise her as lost/ found on national websites.

My little girl came to me at a similar age, in similar circumstances, except I am the next human in the chain, and it was a couple of months before she came to me from her unofficial foster home. They had her scanned for a microchip, advertised as best they could, and flead and wormed her.

I intended to take her to the vet for a check-up as soon as she was settled but my 'hand was forced' within days by a nasty case of ear mites. Since I was already paying for a check-up and treatment, a microchip and first vaccination seemed sensible.

At that appointment I learned from the vet that only ways to determine whether a female cat has been neutered is to wait for her to come into season, wait for clear signs of pregnancy (vet can feel for kittens before they get chubby), or to see an obvious mark/ line in the fur on her side as it grows back after being shaved.

Consider whether to keep your furry charge indoors to reduce the chances of catching fleas or ear mites, or of getting pregnant or catching an STD (if not neutered). And do be aware that the RSPCA consider any cat that is on your property and that you are feeding regularly belongs to you/ is your responsibility.

I imagine that having children in your household adds to the dilemma. :undecided

Gavin83

When you say she's staying in the house I assume she can actually get out of the house should she want to?

SensibleSarah

Most rescues I know wait around a month with strays before rehoming (in the meantime do posters locally, social media posts etc) so I'd say once past that point, you're probably in the clear.

Always a chance that someone will turn up and claim at some point in the future - but my thinking is that if they cared that much, they would have microchipped her etc.