I was out on the patio having a smoke and this rotund little black cat came up to the patio. I’m familiar with the neighborhood vagrants and I’ve never seen this one and cats never come near. As soon as I knelt down and said “hello” this one came running up and started crying and rubbing all over me and standing up and trying to crawl up and snuggle. I’m so weak. I went and got it some food, and it gobbled and gobbled, and kept coming back to me doing laps around my legs.
It still freezes at night here and its coat felt really cold. I went back inside and it followed me in. It won’t leave. It has a collar - but no telephone number on it, damn it!
We already have a cat and all the equipment, plus extras, so it all went in the sunroom, where the cat is going to spend the night.
This cat does not seem to be the sort of cat that wants to be out alone at night - or alone at all, and I’ve lost cats before and wish someone had taken them in.
Tomorrow I’ll have to figure out what to do, but I’m not turning this cat out in the freezing cold tonight.
If you’re going to take the time to put a collar on your cat (and I commend you) put your damn number on it!
This past May I was at a gas station just off the freeway, and saw a cat at playing behind one of the dumpsters at a gas station. I go in to get my stuff and decided to get some cat food, to leave out for the cat. As I’m payng for the stuff, the cashier asks of the cat food is for the cat outside. I told her it was, and she informed me that the cat has been there for about 2 weeks and she’s been feeding it every night she works. She would take it home, but it had an eye infection and didnt have the money for it. Knowing the cat was basically abandoned and was bound to die soon, I took it home. It lived in the garage and back yard of our house, until he decided to go somewhere else. He came back a few times, with stitches, so it looks like someone else has taken him in.
I’m up too late, but just checked on my guest. The sun room has tons of plants in it and a couple fish tanks. You’d think it’d find a more cozy spot than the cat box we put in there, but it’s curled up in the litter box. Ew. I guess that seems the most familiar to it, though.
I sure hope we can find the owner, and the owners aren’t scumbags. Our current cat is Hitler, when it comes to other cats. Literally. He will try to kill them or resign them to camps if he can’t.
Aw, you’re so good to take kitty in! In defense of the owners, one of my boys is constantly losing his collar, so he often has a tag like he should, but when he doesn’t–it’s his own damn fault!
Put up posters around the neighbourhood, I guess? And check in with any neighbourhood vets, as I imagine that’s a likely place for the owners to put up their own “missing cat” signs.
When the cat we have now was a kitten, she would sleep in the litterbox. Ecentually we discovered that she just liked small boxes, and when she was a kitten, the only small box we had was her litterbox. Now she sleeps in a shoebox that is way too small for her, but she loves it.
Yea, if the cat has a collar, the cat may have a chip in it. Not all vets can check for the different types of chips, but they should be able to see if the cat at least has one.
Checked Craig’s list. Nothing there. Good idea, though.
The SO let the cat out this morning because predictably, her cat got really upset upon seeing a strange cat through the glass door of the sun room. What did she do? She let them both out.
The lost kitty disappeared for awhile after the confrontation with Hitler, but came back later and I’ve got it back in the sun room. Seems I can let it out but it’s going to stick around. Fat little thing loves its food, and really loves sitting in my lap and kneading my belly.
Called the Humane Society and left a message. No call back yet. I might take a walk around the neighborhood and see if anyone’s put up some signs or something.
It’s so friendly I think it must be an indoor cat, but it has a pretty thick coat that makes me think it might be outdoor too, but lost.
Sometimes you get the cat; sometimes the cat gets you.
One of our cats, Scrumpet, liked to roam the neighborhood (we had a cat flap in the door; they’d all come and go at will). One day he came home with a collar on. We found that quite interesting. Apparently he preferred someone else’s home to ours so eventually it got so he would visit us only occasionally. Sometimes a cat picks his own home. I hope Hitlerkitty gets used to him soon. Good luck.
You do know you now have a second cat, don’t you? And soon you will be asking Dopers for advice on how to get Hitler to accept the new guy, and asking us for naming advice.
Go ahead. And BTW, where are the pics? It’s a rule.
If I had a cat who was slutting about with other owners, I don’t think I’d be able to resist the urge to treat the cat like a carrier pigeon and attach little notes to him: “Hello, fellow cat owner. I named this wandering bum Scumpet. What did you name him?”
Good luck.
