4 years ago we had an acquaintance in our neighborhood send out a note to see if anyone wanted to take in a cat. Apparently this cat had been hanging out at their house for the past several months, sleeping on their porch, etc. and because winter was coming, they didn't want to just leave it out to freeze. A house had recently been abandoned/foreclosed near them and they assumed that the cat was from that house and just left when the family left. They would have taken it in, but her husband was extremely allergic.
The cat was pretty young (2 at most) so we decided to take it in since our kids (oldest was 6 at the time) had been pestering us for a pet. So the cat is great and when we took it to get spayed, they let us know she had already been spayed, which wasn't unusual since we figured someone had owned her before.
Fast forward to yesterday and my wife and son are riding bikes over in the area where our friend lives and they notice a cat without a collar that looks EXACTLY like our cat. Someone at the house notices and my wife chats them up saying we have a cat that looks exactly the same - same size, etc. The man she's talking to says, that this cat was the kitten of another cat they had, but that cat ran away 2-3 years ago. At that point, it dawns on my wife that the cat we took in, unbeknownst to us, was owned by whoever lives at this house, was originally an outdoor cat, and probably just wandered over the 300 feet or so to our friend's house and hung around because they fed it, thinking it was abandoned.
Of course our kids are now super attached to the cat and I think we've come to decision that we're not going to say anything about it.Considering this was 4 years ago, it was an outdoor cat, and the 'owner" never even bothered to put up a LOST sign, we don't feel too bad about it.
What would you do?
The cat was pretty young (2 at most) so we decided to take it in since our kids (oldest was 6 at the time) had been pestering us for a pet. So the cat is great and when we took it to get spayed, they let us know she had already been spayed, which wasn't unusual since we figured someone had owned her before.
Fast forward to yesterday and my wife and son are riding bikes over in the area where our friend lives and they notice a cat without a collar that looks EXACTLY like our cat. Someone at the house notices and my wife chats them up saying we have a cat that looks exactly the same - same size, etc. The man she's talking to says, that this cat was the kitten of another cat they had, but that cat ran away 2-3 years ago. At that point, it dawns on my wife that the cat we took in, unbeknownst to us, was owned by whoever lives at this house, was originally an outdoor cat, and probably just wandered over the 300 feet or so to our friend's house and hung around because they fed it, thinking it was abandoned.
Of course our kids are now super attached to the cat and I think we've come to decision that we're not going to say anything about it.Considering this was 4 years ago, it was an outdoor cat, and the 'owner" never even bothered to put up a LOST sign, we don't feel too bad about it.
What would you do?