Wasn't sure how to find advice on this, so I thought a pet focused online community would work out. I am UK-based, by the way.
Essentially, one of our neighbour's cats has been living in our home for the last 2 years, with a couple breaks in between. Obviously, for the first few months, we figured he couldn't stay, so we locked him out, shushed him away and had the owner try and collect him (sometime's she would, sometimes not). Eventually, we all settled into this sort of unspoken status quo where he just stayed here and the owner didn't seem to say anything about it.
This changed, however, when the original owner (who hadn't bothered with the cat for months at that point), started getting angry and abusive towards my mother (this dispute is mostly between these two, by the way) and acted as if she had no idea where the cat was these last few months and that my mother had "trapped" him. Where the hell did she think he would be? The pub? This was all about a year into the cat issue. Following this, we decided to obey her will and returned him again to her. We never saw Chase (the cat's name) in our garden for about 3 weeks. We figured he was being locked in; understandable, but Chase was always an outdoors cat
When those 3 weeks ended, we started seeing Chase in our garden again. Now my mum, unsure of what to do, and having adopted a new cat to cope with how upset she was with the situation, decided to keep Chase out of the house and garden. Shushing him away if need be. We kept this up for about 2 months, but caved when it became very clear that Chase had lost a lot of weight. So we let him live here again, feeding him a loving him etc. And during this time we didn't hear a god damned peep from the original owner.
However, over the course of the last couple months, we got a repeat of the "trapped" and "not knowing where he is" thing again. We just decided to sideline this, because we know how it goes and Chase's sister decided to start visiting out garden for whatever reason. We haven't let her in, but have fed her a few times because she was nigh-on skeletal under her long fur.
Now, apologies for the story, but on to the actual point of the post. Chase has become extremely sick. He has rashes over his skin (we think it to be mites) and he scratched the rash on his neck to the point of wounding the spot.This wound became infected, we tried putting healing ointment and mite killing spray, but he's gone a step further and is vomiting a lot. We called the RSPCA (animal welfare) who said they send an inspector (that could be any amount of time) but won't get involved in disputes like this.Our vet won't treat him unless we get written consent from the owner, who is refusing to do so. My mother has tried contacting her, I went over to ask her to collect him because boxing him is proving troublesome, which she has refused on the grounds that she "shouldn't have to come to our home to get her cat", not like she's really been cooperative anyway.
Anyway, we're at a loss. He is sick and needs help but our hands are tied legally, and she just won't cooperate out of pride or something. Sorry for the text wall but we really need advice here. The owner isn't versed in places like Reddit, so you'll never have a chance to hear what her side is so understandable if you take all this with a grain of salt or skepticism.
Thanks.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/bpd85y/sick_cat_dispute_advice/
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