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Depending on your emotional attachment to felines this might be an upsetting read. My housemate and I live in a culdesac surrounded by apartments where primarily college kids like us live. Seems like every house has a cat that goes outside, much like my housemate's cat. For the most part, its nice. A lot of us here know more about the cats than their owners, even. But there's a few issues with certain owners neglecting their cats. This winter, one of our neighbors kept kicking their seriously-old cat (Princess) with arthritis outside. They made attempts to feed her by leaving a bowl outside, but raccoons would often get to it before she could. My housemate would oftentimes bring Princess in to eat and warm up. While sympathizing with the cat, I felt that it wasn't our job to take care of her, especially given that she'd displace our own cat Morty. We raised the concerns with the owners and they "addressed it". Not all that much changed. Princess went missing, presumably to die in private. History is repeating itself with this new cat, called Poe. Poe belongs to some other neighbors opposite of us. He's always outside all night. He's pretty skinny, and when my housemate lets him in he eats as if there's no tomorrow. He's spent the night a couple of times. He's sort of trained to come over here now whenever he sees us get home. I told my housemate if we're feeding and providing housing for someone else's cat, she might as well let the actual owners know. Much like the previous situation, they too "addressed it". Poe still comes inside begging for food. Today we found him eating out of the dumpster. I've been firm with my housemate on not making our apartment the kitty halfway house. Shes a huge cat lover and I can't blame her for wanting to recreate Neko Atsume. Likewise, I feel like total crap keeping hungry kitties out because I too grew up with cats. -------- My housemate is going to talk to the owners soon again, but I don't even know what she can say. Is this just a thing where you keep knocking on their door until they take care of the cat or something? We live in a pretty hippie area so the majority of shelters are no-kill. Taking in the cat as our own is out of the question due to financial concerns and school obligations. Frankly, I'm not sure if talking to the neighbors is going to work this time around because they really don't seem moved enough to change anything.
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Dec 20, 2016 22:10
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| # ? May 4, 2024 10:40 |
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Is there a reason you cannot simply report these neighbors of yours as indicated here? I mean besides however nice they are to you personally, cause seriously if they think it's okay to leave a cat outside in extreme cold/heat they're not actually good people.
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Dec 21, 2016 03:30
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Trap the cats and send them off to the ASPCA because outdoor cats are poo poo hth
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Dec 21, 2016 14:22
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^ Seconding. Bring that cat to the ASPCA. The neighbors won't know for sure it was you, but let the shelter folks know the backstory. If you can, bring the cat to a further shelter than the one right by you. If the lovely loving owners can't be fussed to pick the cat up or check outside the nearest possible shelter (this is assuming it's not chipped) you've saved the poor dude, and if they pick the cat up and go right back to leaving it to starve outside, well then bring it right back to the shelter. If these people are as uncaring as you've painted them then they probably won't go to undue lengths to get this dude back. If you do this a couple of times and they keep bringing the cat back and kicking him outside, and it's cold/bad weather, he's starving and skinny, talk to the shelter and see what they recommend. It reeks of abuse to me, and it's definitely neglect. I'm kind of a nut who's volunteered at the local shelter and I've grabbed cats off the street before and brought them in. Guess what: lazy, lovely people don't like having to do any work to find a pet, let alone traveling more than three steps to go pick them up. Sometimes just the act of having to do that once or thrice is enough to make them decide it isn't worth it. In my opinion, I wouldn't have another conversation with the owners. Then they might suspect you of being a catnapper and it's no fun to have neighbors that hate you. It's highly unlikely they'll change what they're doing with another "friendly reminder to not neglect your animal," because that's just not how people work. They're more likely to get defensive and buckle down on bad behavior out of spite.
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Dec 28, 2016 22:32
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