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What do you do...
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| SYSTEM-J |
| ...when you try and return a missing cat to its owner and the cat doesn't want to go? |
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| Lews |
| Where is the cat? Like, literally. Is it hiding under a couch/bed/etc? I'd attempt to coax it out of its hideaway with some food, then pick it up and deposit it in a box that can be securely closed. |
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| planetaryplayer |
| Eat the cat |
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| DJRYAN™ |
| get a laser pointer and have the cat follow it to your intended designation.. |
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| Silky Johnson |
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| Lews |
My favorite part of that scene is how he goes from happily petting the cat to "Hmm, how is this going to work? Guess I'm gonna have to shoot the ******."
Edit: er is a banned word here? What? |
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| SYSTEM-J |
The cat was visiting our house every couple of days about a week ago for a few scraps of food, then it stopped coming. I thought nothing of it because it's just a random, albeit friendly, cat. But then I saw a missing cat poster that perfectly matched the description of our visitor, and I began to worry about why it had stopped coming. I saved the number on the poster and decided to keep an eye out for the cat.
Anyway, I was getting home tonight and I saw the same cat out on the street. I was quite relieved it was alive and well so I got it to come inside, fed it a bit of chicken and called the number from the poster. The guy couldn't get his phone to view the photos I sent (he didn't seem very tech-savvy) so he came 'round to view the cat. The cat looked just like his, but the only caveat was it had a collar, which he hadn't put on it.
Here's where it gets interesting: he had only recently adopted the cat with his daughter, and the cat hadn't been with them for too long when it went missing. That was three weeks ago. Although the cat looked and behaved just like his cat, it'd been his pet for such a short period he couldn't be completely sure it was his. The new collar suggested it either wasn't, or that someone else had taken it in. The cat is extremely friendly - it was climbing all over me, draping itself around my neck, purring ferociously - and it wasn't shy to come into our house for food. It strikes me as very likely the cat had gone into someone's house and promptly been claimed and collared as their new pet. And while the cat was pretty amicable towards the guy, it certainly didn't behave like it had been reunited with its beloved owner and it damn well was not going into his cat box.
So what can you do? He didn't want to take it in case it wasn't his, and it certainly wasn't going in the box at any rate. I can't keep it in my house either. We decided to let the cat go back out onto the street, and since it seemed to be staying in the general area of my street he could come back in a few days with his daughter who would be able to identify the cat for certain.
All a very long-winded way of saying "I let a cat into my house and then let it back out again". The interesting question in this whole predicament is this: can the guy really claim to be the rightful owner of the cat, just because he answered an ad on Gumtree and paid someone money for it? If you adopt a cat and it promptly runs off after a couple of week and turns up apparently under new ownership, can you claim it back? Legally? Morally? Does the cat get the right to decide who "owns" it? If the cat decides it wants to live with me rather than him, because I've fed it chicken scraps three times in succession, what then? |
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| Lews |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
All a very long-winded way of saying "I let a cat into my house and then let it back out again". The interesting question in this whole predicament is this: can the guy really claim to be the rightful owner of the cat, just because he answered an ad on Gumtree and paid someone money for it? If you adopt a cat and it promptly runs off after a couple of week and turns up apparently under new ownership, can you claim it back? Legally? Morally? Does the cat get the right to decide who "owns" it? If the cat decides it wants to live with me rather than him, because I've fed it chicken scraps three times in succession, what then? |
Legally it depends on who the cat is registered to [who pays taxes on it], at least here. If your cat runs away and someone takes it in, discovers it is yours, and doesn't contact you, they have stolen your cat and have to pay a fine / possibly go to jail.
Morally is a whole different ballgame. Personally I think cats should have a right to decide who owns them. It is a symbiotic relationship that both parties have to agree to, even though one party obviously has much more power. When you adopt one/buy one, you're given a limited amount of time to make the relationship work. If the cat runs away frequently after that, it clearly doesn't want to stay and should probably be let free.
If the cat decides it wants to live with you, you need to decide if you'll let it.
Also, do cats in the UK not have electronic ID chips? |
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| Spacey Orange |
| if you're Asian, you eat it. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
Also, do cats in the UK not have electronic ID chips? |
They do, but it's not mandatory. This cat was purchased on Gumtree when it was about a year old, so I doubt the original owner was very formal about that kind of thing. You don't pay tax on pets here, so they aren't registered with any official authority. Near as I can tell, this guy's claim to ownership is based on the sale and purchase of the cat as if it were an inanimate object, not a living thing capable of taking issue with its circumstances. Even he didn't feel right exercising that assumption.
There's no option in keeping the cat myself, unfortunately. It can't happen. But again, the cat is super friendly and kept coming back inside the house of its own accord. Does whoever put a collar on it have any more place in the cat's heart than I do right now? It's pretty common for cats to be fed by multiple households in one area and to basically live with whoever it pleases at a given moment. |
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| Intellekshual |
When pet owners put a collar on their pet, the collar is usually engraved with the pet's name and the owner's number in case the pet goes missing.
Also, it's possible that the daughter put the collar on the cat and the father simply wasn't aware. I say just wait for the daughter to see the cat since you said she'd be able to identify it for certain. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
This collar just had a little bell on the front. The daughter won't be back until next weekend, but I'm pretty certain the cat will still be hanging around then.
What irks me about this whole affair is I really wanted to return the missing cat to its owner. I had a couple of cats go missing as a child and it was emotionally traumatic for me at that age, so I wanted the emotional closure of being able to return someone else's cat to their owners. I wanted little girls weeping with joy, I wanted grateful dads offering me reward money only for me to quip "Spend it on cat food". I wanted to do a good deed, damnit, and I stayed up way past midnight on a weeknight waiting for this guy to arrive so I could make it happen. And then the bloody cat starts getting all postmodern about the notion of ownership and I'm left red-eyed, tired and without any karmic currency for my troubles. Bastard. |
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