When do you stop owning a cat?

gimmick

Odd sounding question I know. We have a cat, or had a cat, not sure which anymore. She is approx 2 years old. About 4-5 months ago, her trips out went from being a few hours, to a day, to 2 days to 5 days, and at this stage a fortnight. And when she does come in, she wont eat what we try and feed her. Within 20 an hour she is whinging to go back out again.

She is being fed elsewhere as she is as plump now as she was in September.

I really don't care that any of the above happened as she is a very aloof cat. Never a very lovable cat. Rarely came near me, would go to the girlfriend alright, but not that often. And would scratch and lash out if you picked her up alot of the time.


Is it time to draw a line under this cat and now treat it as a stray or someone else's cat.

Kenno90

think it's safe to say the cat cat is moved on lol, if the cat only comes once every 2 weeks then it might be spending the rest of that time in a different house

tbh

you never actually own a cat! but to answer your question, the cat is your responsibility as long as you or it is alive. If it needs food, you have to feed it. If it needs the vet, you have to bring it.

Hogzy

Your cat is sleeping around id say! Cats are sluts!

The Sweeper

Cats and dogs are different in one main way: you get out of a cat only what you put into it, whereas a dog will keep giving and giving even if it's treated badly.

If your cat was standoffish and would lash out, it was up to you to handle it and soothe it and help it go through attitude adjustment until it was a more likeable animal. If you didn't understand cats well enough to realise that, and in fairness you didn't want to get scratched, that's fair enough and plenty of people are like that. What you end up with is an aloof, surly bugger that pisses off for weeks at a time - virtually all cats will default to this if they don't have much interaction with their owner. Even well-handled cats have different levels of drive for territory - some will never leave the back garden, some will roam miles, even when neutered.

As a previous poster said, you are still responsible for the animal until you firmly establish that someone else is responsible instead, which you would have to do in agreement with them, so that food bills and vets bills are THEIR problem, not yours.

Plenty of people feed random cats that come round.

Hardly any of those people would ever think to give that random cat a worm tablet (which it needs every three months of its adult life).

The good-hearted cat-feeders will bring the animal to the vet if it's very ill, but few of them will bring it early in its illness, because they always think "Hey, after all, it's not my cat".

You have two choices - find out who else is minding her and ask them to take her on with full responsibility, or work on claiming her back as your cat.

Skillie

put a note on her collar for the new owners to contact you maybe