Don’t. If it’s got a collar and a bell then it’s owned. Do not feed it. Do not name it. Do not call it.

My cat is such a friendly cat, everyone in the street knows her, but she was almost stolen because someone thought she was a stray, even though she had a collar. Don’t steal someone else’s cat. It’s being greedy, getting two lots of food, and is probably skittish because it knows that you aren’t its owners and is just scamming you for food before returning home to get its second meal. Or maybe just coming to you cause your food is better then returning home to go inside and the poor owners are worrying because its not eating their food or isn’t around as much as it used to be. Or it could be going around to all the houses in the neighbourhood and getting lots of meals at different times and the owners are worrying why it is hardly at home at all. Unless you are absolutely certain (and I mean after you’ve gone door knocking to find out who’s it is) then do not coax it.

Not to freak you out but my friend let a stray into her house and let it eat from her cats bowl and her cat got FIP which is a brain disease. They aren’t positive that’s how her cat got it but it was the only other cat it had been around. Make flyers or put an ad in the paper but don’t let stray cats around your other cats. Vaccines aren’t 100%.

STOP SHOUTING

My cat was killed by that sort of kindness. Literally.

He was old, suffering from severe digestive problems, and able to handle his food only with regular medication with every single meal. The meds were working well for a while, but then he started getting skinnier and skinnier, until we thought he was on his last legs. Yet he still seemed to enjoy life and could even still bring down sizeable birds. It was not time to let him go.

Then one day he didn’t come home. This was so unlike him. He never missed suppertime and always slept indoors. Of course we feared the worst and thought we’d find his body in somebody’s yard, if we were lucky. We worried that we would never even know.

We searched the neighborhood and posted signs and handed out flyers and knocked on doors. We also visited the animal shelter without success. It took us 3 days, but we finally found someone in the wider neighborhood who had called animal rescue on a skinny stray, and a wagon had come and picked him up. I won’t tell you how this person trapped him, but he didn’t make it easy.

In the process we learned that he was ranging much farther than we had ever suspected, even in his condition, and he was being fed here…there…by this nice lady, by that family with cats…they all thought he was starving. He was, thanks to them: for every meal he ate out, he was not getting the meds we were trying to give him so faithfully at home. (He also walked into their houses in a friendly and charming way because he was so comfortable with people—and one neighbor said he came and took naps with her. We never knew!)

By the time we got to him at the animal rescue, he’d been without his meds for 3 days and was so far gone we couldn’t save him. All we could do was cry and say good-bye.

The bell and collar are information you must not ignore. They say: I belong to somebody. I am being cared for. No matter how I look to you, I am not your business. Leave me alone.