Well, King Solomon would have the solution: cut the cat in half.
I wonder what Solomon would do?
When I was a kid, about 8 to 11, we went on vacation and when we came back our family cat had abandoned us. This traitorous feline had found an older couple that fed him but did not expect anything from him. Cats are just like welfare recipients, they want everything but given nothing!
Sometimes, a cat or a dog makes their own choice about who is going to best care for their needs. Sometimes an animal just wants to change their lifestyle, greater or lesser attention.
Greater or different foods. If you get a second pet, that first one make not like it at all, but may not be the type to fight about it- at first.
Cats sometimes claim more than one family, and just go back and forth. That’s cats for you.
One cat.
Two families.
Zero paragraphs. ;-)
Guilty of intentional theft. The police are idiots if they buy that they heard the name from a neighbor, yet didn't try to find the owner in the neighborhood. If they can prove a case of neglect, then the authorities can get involved. But the neglect doesn't transfer ownership.
BS. Everyone knows that's NOT how you get a cat to go home.
It’s not rare that a few families share a community cat.
I never understand why people let their cats wander around outdoors in a city environment.
The cat kept coming back to their home, because they kept feeding it.
==
It used to be sort of common knowlege that if one feeds a ‘stray’ cat, it will take up residence.
Found a very small, very cold, black cat in my yard one December night. Took him in. Starting about a year later, he would disappear for a night or two, sometimes even a month or two. Then, he would be back. I finally put a collar on him. About a month later, he disappeared again. A woman showed up a couple of days later wanting to know why I had put a collar on her cat.
At that point, I knew what was happening. I asked her if her cat had been disappearing every so often for a variable period of time? She said she had. At that point she knew too. We had one cat who commuted between our two homes. He wasn’t any one’s cat but we were his.
This went on for a couple of years more and, then, he left and I never saw him again. Was he hit by a car? Did the other family move and take him with them? Never found out.
It doesn’t sound like the Gotke family let Joey outside once they took him in. Perhaps they were concerned that he’d return to his home. How could they not have seen the flyers, the vet not checked beyond one site? Sure sounds fishy.
$1100 for a CAT?
"And, we said `Here is food and water, now go home kitty cat. ...
LOL. Works every time. Feed them, they always leave.
"Finders keepers, losers weepers"..............
I remember a study that either the HSUS or the ASPCA did many years ago that found that roaming outdoor cats had on average three different people that believed they owned the cat. All three people were unaware that anyone else also fed and sheltered the cat -— and the cats refused to tell them.
The cat must be enjoying all this.
We had a cat for nearly 17 YEARS and when we took in a stray kitten, the older cat started staying around less and less, then not at all. We thought she was long dead this past Christmas, then I saw her last month a block away. She wouldn’t let me touch her, but seemed to remember me. She has no teeth and my husband (a vet) is amazed that she is still alive and as healthy as she is. I hate that she won’t be with us when her time comes.