Help for a Dog Person

Hi everyone!

I'm totally new to the forum, and in fact am primarily a dog person due to allergies (but am a general animal lover). I just wanted to post over here to see what you all think about our situation.

We have a lot of outdoor cats in our neighborhood, and I'm pretty familiar with a few of the familiar cat faces we see around town. Some of them are friendly and will come up for pets and maybe lounge in our garden for a little while before meandering off to wherever they go. I've never had one of our neighborhood cats hang around longer than an hour or so, nor are they usually all that thrilled to have attention lavished on them. I also generally see them at the same times of the day and not regularly throughout the week.

Well, about two weeks ago, suddenly a new cat face showed up in our yard. He was friendly to us, interested in and friendly toward our (huge!) dogs, and seemed to more-or-less take up residence on and under our back deck.

We kind of assumed that he was just another neighborhood traveler and would be gone soon enough, or would just start stopping by here and there to visit before going home. But after a couple of days we noticed that every time we went outside - morning, afternoon, evening - he would pop up from under the deck or under our cars. Meowing, rubbing on our legs, even climbing up into our laps to snuggle.

After about 3 days of seeing him outside from literally 7am through about 9:30 PM, we gave him some food. I know...now I'm committed. But I couldn't stand the idea that he might be hungry!

Ever since then, he's been outside every single day from dawn to dusk. Literally. He sleeps and sunbathes on our deck, pops out from under the deck when we walk outside or pull up in the driveway, etc. He's been eating dinner at our house at the same time every night and then lingers for hours afterward, napping on our deck chairs before going...wherever he goes after dark.

A couple of times - but not every night - I have gone outside to get something out of our cars close to midnight and he has popped out from under our car to say hi. So now I know that he's around my house literally all day every day and spends at least the occasional late night at our place.

I took him to our vet to check for a microchip, and he doesn't have one. He doesn't have a collar. He's a neutered male, 1-2 years old. He has an ear clip that indicates that he was probably neutered by either a feral cat organization or maybe the local low-cost spay/neuter clinic...but this cat is NOT feral. He's clean, super super friendly and cuddly, only a tiny bit underweight.

The area where I live is fairly rural and definitely has a high rate of people moving away and leaving their pets, abandoning their pets, not caring too much when they wander off, etc. So....to some extent, I'm kind of wondering whether that might have happened to this little guy? But if it had, I have no idea how to know for sure and to make sure that I haven't catnapped someone else's pet.

I work at our animal shelter so I've gone through all of the lost cat reports, but found nothing. No one has reported a lost cat to the newspaper, shelter, Craigslist, or numerous Facebook groups that I've joined where people post lost cat ads. I haven't posted that I "found" a cat yet, because as far as I can tell he just hangs out around our house and I might not have "found" him at all!

(We live in a fairly safe area for outdoor cats, by the way - very little traffic, very little wildlife, etc. I'm fairly confident that he's safe where he is for the time being, but I'm just trying to figure out what I should do.)

One more weird (?) thing - we had some bad storms around the neighborhood yesterday, and my husband went home to check on the house. The cat was huddled up on our deck, under a tree, soaking wet. My husband let him in the house, dried him off, snuggled him for a little bit, etc. Once it stopped raining he put a makeshift box/shelter thing on the deck in case it rained again. When I got home the cat was curled up inside the box. I put some treats in the box last night in case he came back and this morning I found that the treats were gone...and also found a dead mouse on our front porch. I can't prove it, of course, but I think he was around here last night.

So I guess I have some questions.....................how does this behavior compare to normal outdoor cats? Is it normal for someone's outdoor cat to be gone for 12+ continuous hours every single day and to hang out so exclusively at someone else's house? Is it possible this is actually a stray/abandoned cat? How could I ever possibly know??? Does anyone have any ideas??

Signed,

Not a Cat Lady (who nonetheless really likes this particular cat and wants to make sure it's taken care of...while also not kidnapping someone else's animal)

taylor1619 said:

 
Hi everyone!

I'm totally new to the forum, and in fact am primarily a dog person due to allergies (but am a general animal lover). I just wanted to post over here to see what you all think about our situation.

We have a lot of outdoor cats in our neighborhood, and I'm pretty familiar with a few of the familiar cat faces we see around town. Some of them are friendly and will come up for pets and maybe lounge in our garden for a little while before meandering off to wherever they go. I've never had one of our neighborhood cats hang around longer than an hour or so, nor are they usually all that thrilled to have attention lavished on them. I also generally see them at the same times of the day and not regularly throughout the week.

Well, about two weeks ago, suddenly a new cat face showed up in our yard. He was friendly to us, interested in and friendly toward our (huge!) dogs, and seemed to more-or-less take up residence on and under our back deck.

We kind of assumed that he was just another neighborhood traveler and would be gone soon enough, or would just start stopping by here and there to visit before going home. But after a couple of days we noticed that every time we went outside - morning, afternoon, evening - he would pop up from under the deck or under our cars. Meowing, rubbing on our legs, even climbing up into our laps to snuggle.

After about 3 days of seeing him outside from literally 7am through about 9:30 PM, we gave him some food. I know...now I'm committed. But I couldn't stand the idea that he might be hungry!

Ever since then, he's been outside every single day from dawn to dusk. Literally. He sleeps and sunbathes on our deck, pops out from under the deck when we walk outside or pull up in the driveway, etc. He's been eating dinner at our house at the same time every night and then lingers for hours afterward, napping on our deck chairs before going...wherever he goes after dark.

A couple of times - but not every night - I have gone outside to get something out of our cars close to midnight and he has popped out from under our car to say hi. So now I know that he's around my house literally all day every day and spends at least the occasional late night at our place.

I took him to our vet to check for a microchip, and he doesn't have one. He doesn't have a collar. He's a neutered male, 1-2 years old. He has an ear clip that indicates that he was probably neutered by either a feral cat organization or maybe the local low-cost spay/neuter clinic...but this cat is NOT feral. He's clean, super super friendly and cuddly, only a tiny bit underweight.

The area where I live is fairly rural and definitely has a high rate of people moving away and leaving their pets, abandoning their pets, not caring too much when they wander off, etc. So....to some extent, I'm kind of wondering whether that might have happened to this little guy? But if it had, I have no idea how to know for sure and to make sure that I haven't catnapped someone else's pet.

I work at our animal shelter so I've gone through all of the lost cat reports, but found nothing. No one has reported a lost cat to the newspaper, shelter, Craigslist, or numerous Facebook groups that I've joined where people post lost cat ads. I haven't posted that I "found" a cat yet, because as far as I can tell he just hangs out around our house and I might not have "found" him at all!

(We live in a fairly safe area for outdoor cats, by the way - very little traffic, very little wildlife, etc. I'm fairly confident that he's safe where he is for the time being, but I'm just trying to figure out what I should do.)

One more weird (?) thing - we had some bad storms around the neighborhood yesterday, and my husband went home to check on the house. The cat was huddled up on our deck, under a tree, soaking wet. My husband let him in the house, dried him off, snuggled him for a little bit, etc. Once it stopped raining he put a makeshift box/shelter thing on the deck in case it rained again. When I got home the cat was curled up inside the box. I put some treats in the box last night in case he came back and this morning I found that the treats were gone...and also found a dead mouse on our front porch. I can't prove it, of course, but I think he was around here last night.

So I guess I have some questions.....................how does this behavior compare to normal outdoor cats? Is it normal for someone's outdoor cat to be gone for 12+ continuous hours every single day and to hang out so exclusively at someone else's house? Is it possible this is actually a stray/abandoned cat? How could I ever possibly know??? Does anyone have any ideas??

Signed,

Not a Cat Lady (who nonetheless really likes this particular cat and wants to make sure it's taken care of...while also not kidnapping someone else's animal)

Click to expand...

You had been chosen and accepted by this cat.

The question is, are you willing to adopt this cat as your own?  inside kitty or just outside kitty?

He is as you hint, surely dumped this way or another, and he wants a new home.  Dog or even no dog.

If you think its touchy to just adopt someone in need of a home, you can of course seek actively after the owner...

But dont write every detail on how he looks.  Let the owner identy himself by giving the last details of description.

I presume a vet check up is wise, to guard up your dog if nothing else.   He is surely healthy, but may have got fleas and worms in the time.

Observe some meds for dogs are OK  for cats, with another dosage, while others are a no no...

MY advice is you adopt him.

Good luck!

See, this is my instinct! (He's decided he wants to live with us and even if I find his owners, he's going to be here all the time anyway.) But, geez...I just feel so bad at the idea that he might be someone else's kitty.

...But then again, if someone's beloved kitty had gone missing for days and days because he was spending every day and night at our house, I guess I probably would have seen a lost report, huh?

Right now we are planning to keep him if he doesn't have another owner. He has to primarily be an outdoor cat because of my allergies and the fact that one of our two dogs just can't deal with having a cat inside the house full-time. (It's not an aggression thing - she ADORES cats and will not leave them alone. But she's old and arthritic and I feel like leaving them alone in the house all day would be asking for trouble because she cannot take hints about when to leave him alone and he would probably get (justifiably) mad about that.)

But we would set him up with a space in our garage and a pet door and an actual outdoor cat house on the deck so he would have some shelter. And he can definitely come into the house here and there to hang out with us. And we would definitely take him to the vet to get a checkup and shots and flea meds and anything else he might need. In fact, if he's still here this weekend we were considering taking him in on Saturday or Monday morning to get a checkup.

But adopting a cat like this just feels...weird! Don't cats roam around all the time? Aren't there all kinds of stories about cats that have two homes where the people are totally unaware of each other? Am I one of those dupes who gets tricked into feeding a kitty his second dinner every night?

He's adorable, though. If I can figure out how to post a photo here I'll add one.

I had the same exact situation last year.  As it turned out, the cat belonged to one of my neighbors but could not adjust to different cats coming in to the household for fostering.  I adopted her as my own before I knew this.  Once I bumped in to the neighbor and she said her little cat had disowned her because of her fostering responsibilities.  I asked her what the cat looked like and ,bingo, it was the little cat I had fallen in love with.  I let her know that the cat was at my house and that I had become quite fond of her.  She said, "Wonderful!  Now I can stop worrying about her."  So...the cat is still with me. She is my darling little 6 lb. "quirky cat."

Go ahead and adopt him as your own.  Ask questions later.