I agree with this. I mean, I hate Rand Rover as much as the next girl, but a blind pig does occasionally find an acorn.
Nah. I’m pretty sure that all the other girls hate him more than you do, but that’s a subject for another thread.
Can’t we have just one thread that’s not about how you all envy my success and my dashing good looks? Thanks.
Bingo. I have one cat who won’t leave visitors alone; the rest flee in terror; in fact I have one that bolts for cover at the sound of the UPS truck pulling into the condo complex. Another isn’t viewable by strangers unless you’re willing to squeeze in behind the furnace.
Many sane posters here are proposing the reasonable solution of showing her the cat up close. As this might convince her it is not her cat. But the woman sounds obsessed with the idea that it IS her’s. Some crazy women steal babies. She might just Snatch the Pussy. (Band name! First album title: My Pussy is Not Yours)
Perhaps what is required is a little wisdom of Solomon. Offer to cut the cat in half and give her the choice of which part she wants. This will provide the dual benefit of avoiding the decision as to whether to call the cops, because she probably will.
Footnote: Don’t yell! I’m a cat lover and I’m only kidding…at least a little…I think.
The only sane solution to Sailboat’s dilemma is to adopt the pussy loser lady.
That way the cat stays in the family. The stocky mustachioed guy can come over for visits.
Those threads happen when you don’t post about your political views and social skills.
And just to make sure she doesn’t still insist it’s her cat, while holding the cat you can surreptitiously insert your finger into the cat’s rectum so that it will start hissing and growling and then tell her that the cat doesn’t like her so it must not be her cat.
I’m laughing so hard I’m crying, and I think I may have just drooled a bit.
Damn, I laughed till I cried as well. I needed that right now. Having the Monty Python crowd doing it with an obviously fake cat, perhaps in a classic halloween pose, with exaggerated fake movements and sounds, with someone exclaiming “see!, he doesnt like you, this must not be YOUR cat!”
thats what my minds eye sees right now.
Are you sure the turban wasn’t her way of hiding a tape recorder or something?
She was trying to get you to admit that you’ve taken a Sharpie and drawn a mustache on her cat, so you can keep it.
Hi there. I spent some time doing things other than the Internet (I know! Weird, huh?) at home, and the Internet connection at work has been out for the past two whole days, so I haven’t been following this thread closely enough to defend the perfectly obvious from suspicious strangers, sorry.
I didn’t let her see the cat up close for the following reasons:
[ul]
[li]I wasn’t sure who she was. I have only seen her twice before in my life, and she looked different then, with long hair and Western clothes. I mean, I thought it was her, but if so, why would she be acting like we’d never talked before? It was only after my wife called the number on the poster that I could be sure who this person was.[/li][li]She was acting so strangely it put me on my guard.[/li][li]I was flabbergasted by her blankly not acknowledging what I was saying and had trouble deciding what to do.[/li][li]We have two dogs who really, really love visitors. While talking, I was holding both dogs back so they wouldn’t swarm her with rowdy affection.[/li][li]The cat isn’t very fond of being handled – he’s shown a willingness to bite when picked up. We’ve only had him 5 months or so and we’re still socializing him.[/li][/ul]
Remember this wasn’t something I’d planned to do – I was just sitting down after getting home from work, there’s a knock at the door, and suddenly the dogs are going nuts and someone who looks and acts like a cult member seems to be insinuating that people she won’t name have been telling lies about us.
Remember, she’s not saying “it looks like” we have her cat or “we might” have her cat, but “someone told her we took her cat.” And she never replies when we ask about that someone, she just lets it roll off her, standing there passively.
I mention the duration of the cat’s presence because this is a “cite, please,” fact-based board and I can hardly think of anything more persuasive than the laws of physics to show that it CAN NOT POSSIBLY be her cat. I mention it repeatedly because I’m flabbergasted that neither she nor, apparently, some Straight Dopers believe in the primacy of the laws of physics in determining the location of physical objects.
I could mention other reasons he’s not her cat, but frankly, those aren’t as persuasive as the sheer physical impossibility that he could be her cat, so I only mentioned the obvious one, appearance.
I haven’t updated you because she hasn’t come back and, so far, I’ve been busy every evening with other things, so there’s been no interesting change in the circumstances to relate, unless Rand Rover has gotten imperceptibly richer, or Starving Artist has solved the mystery from afar using sheer deductive reasoning.
I’m not in any doubt about the provenance of the cat. I did think this was a strange, even an exasperating encounter, and it would make an interesting story.
I think showing her the cat under controlled conditions (no dog craziness, possibly a cat carrier or gloves) is probably the best solution. I would feel better about doing so with my wife present, as she’s part of this too, having spoken to the woman on the phone more than once, and since my wife is more attached to Lefty (the said cat) than I am. Currently my wife has not been getting home very early, which makes it awkward, as it seems improper to call on a bereaved cat owner after ten PM on a work night to say “And this isn’t your cat!”
But soon I hope the timing will be more favorable and maybe i won’t feel too weird about initiating the conversation. I will post the results if anything develops.
Thanks, Sailboat. Curious story. I hope all turns out well. The lady sounds a bit nutty, and hopefully she won’t return.
Thanks for the response/explanation, Sailboat. Several things that seemed curious are less so now. I hope that if you contact this woman or otherwise see or hear from her again that all will work out well.
muttermuttermuttermutter neighborhood muttermutter social values mutter Rand.
Heh.
Heheh.
snerk
BWAHAHAHAHA!
You’re not from around here, are ya, stranger?
That means nothing to her. Hell, it means nothing to US here for that matter. If you’ll steal a cat, you’ll easily, no, probably lie about when you got it to boot.
Believe it or not, I think most of us here actually understand the non-physics of a cat being in two places at one.
Yeah, this woman aint acting in the most rational manner. But if my beloved pet was missing and I had some inkling that some guy down the street had “adopted” my lost pet and behaved how it sounds like you have, I’d be acting a bit odd too.
Yeah, you are most very likely right that it is your cat, and you have good reason to behave the way you have so far. You also have a right (and good reason) to tell police officers to get a warrant before they look in your house, but it sure aint going to convince them of your innocence when you do.
If physically showing her the cat is an issue, do this. Ask her to bring a good pic of her cat. Also ask her to bring her own camera. When she shows up, take her camera, go inside, take of pic of the cat, and then give the camera back to her. Let her compare the two.
Or, get/borrow a cat carrier. Put the cat in it and jam the opening against a window she can see easily from the outside. Let her inspect away.
If she is remotely normal, problem solved. If she is a loon, I have a hard time seeing how this makes things worse.
You have a hard time believing how folks here can’t believe your innocence. I have a hard time believeing that you can’t see from that ladies point of view everything you’ve done so far proves absolutely nothing.
Best of luck. Seriously.
Heh. Ha! Uh huh. FWIW, my “social values” (whatever that means) include the idea that it’s OK to shun a harrassing crazy person and that it’s OK to escalate the response if the crazy person escalates the harrassment. But since I like some of the Aynster’s ideas and am unrepetently greedy etc and etc, I guess that makes it Ok to think that everything I believe is far afield of what others on this board believe.
Well, if someone showed up accusing me of stealing something and then acted all weird and spacey, I don’t know that I’d be going out of my way to take them all that seriously. From his point of view, the lady hasn’t proven anything either.
I think you mean…
Period!
So, you’d just grip about it on an internet forum and accomplish nothing? And keep getting stalked, and getting the evil eye, and having the neighbors wonder what the heck is going on?
Seems to me spending one minute of your time to actually resolve the problem for everyone involved is time well invested. Anonymous gripping about the problem on the internet, not so much…