Cat , Stray or Not ?

C.O.Y.B.I.B

Hi ,

Weve had a cat visit our garden in a housing estate regularly for a few weeks and eventually we started throwing him a few scraps of food. Fast Fwd a few months and the kids have bought him a food bowl and feed him cat food every morning.

Now he appears regular as clockwork for his morning feed , dissapears off for the day and pops into the garden once or during the day and returns for food the following morning. He has no collar but is clean etc and looks well fed even though we only feed him once.

He doesn't s**t in our garden or anywhere near and doesn't sleep there at night that we can see . We've never let him in the house

Question is ... Do you think he's stray ? Is he now our cat ? How responsible are we for him :-)

We're away for a week soon and wondering what to do with him ....

My gut instinct is that he probably has another family where he spends the other half of his time , but how do we know for sure ????

I'm sure we could bring to get and check for chip , but he doesn't really like being touched so I cant imagine he'd go willingly :-)

Thanks

Faith

He is almost certainly a pet and his family probably aren’t delighted that he’s going missing and gaining weight!

if you could catch him, you could put a paper collar on him (eg https://www.cats.org.uk/media/1283/com_1032_lost_and_found_collar_print_out_aw.pdf) and hopefully his owners can contact you and let you know that he has a loving home.

I know you mean well in feeding the cat, but I’d advise stopping until you can be sure it’s a stray. My cat, for example, has a dreadfully sensitive tummy and he could get the squitters from being fed different food. He also doesn’t need any extra so he’d just be gaining weight which is bad for him!

C.O.Y.B.I.B

Thanks , good advice on the note . Will do that and see if anything comes of it .