We have lived in our house 2.5 years and have never met our neighbour to the left. When we moved here, the other neighbours informed us that the unknown neighbour, M, was elderly, extremely ill and to introduce ourselves may exhaust or upset her. She has severe diabetes, is bedbound, has lost a leg, and has associated mental health problems. Carers come over every few hours and there's an ambulance in her driveway probably once a fortnight.
Not wanting to intrude, we have deliberately made the choice not to go over and say hello.
Very soon after we moved in, a friendly little chunk of a tabby cat sauntered into our lounge when the back door was open. My then 3 year old daughter, obsessed with cats, was instantly besotted and called this creature Sparkly. The cat had no collar but was mega friendly. I spent the next year picking her up and gently putting her back outside multiple times a day as she would wander in literally every time we had the back door or windows open, so up to dozens of times a day.
She was really persistent, and so cute. We would all sit on the patio and give her strokes and headbumps.
About a year ago, she turned up at our door with a swollen eye. My daughter was bereft and my husband and I were also really worried. I did a google map search, knocked on about 40 doors over 3 streets to find her owner.
In the end I found out that she HAD lived three doors over. She had deliberately moved herself out when her original owners got a dog. At the same time, our neighbour, M's husband, began feeding her and kind of took her in. M's husband then died and M's health declined.
M already had a house cat for company however the house cat and our friendly Sparkly didnt get on, so Sparkly was fed and had gone to the vet about her swollen eye (which then resolved itself) but was basically an outdoor cat. She is also not microchipped.
We learned all this through M's main carer, K. K has been trying to persuade M to go into a care home for several years and I gather K is ambivalent about the pets, she seems to see them as an additional stress.
Sparkly got better and continued to walk in to our house many times a day. At night, she slept under my daughter's trampoline in our garden. A few months after the swollen eye thing, there was a massive storm and I let Sparkly hang out in our lounge with the doors shut to shelter from the rain. She was perfectly well behaved, purred loads, and just slept on the sofa for like 8hrs then got up and left without fuss when the storm was over.
I said "fuck it" and stopped putting her out. My husband had long refused to put her outside as he adores her. I was just so sick of being the bad guy, constantly saying "she's not our cat". So fast-forward to today, 14 or so months later. When I open the back door for some air at 7am, Sparkly comes in. She comes and goes all day. She sleeps on the sofa, follow my husband around like a little dog, and is always happy to see people.
I insist we don't feed her proper meals, although she will politely scavenge any food scraps going and we do give her treats last thing at night - I throw a few on the patio to get her to go out so I can shut her out. I feel like having her here overnight would be a big step forward, if that makes sense?!
After much soul searching, hubby and I have given up our dream of dog ownership and both admitted that we would really like it if Sparkly was our cat full-time permanently. The idea that she is not microchipped or collared, and could therefore technically vanish any moment if she was picked up by someone who didn't know her situation - well that makes us all really sad. We don't want that. I am sick of putting her out every night. She cries under our bedroom window. She doesn't just wander next door to a nice warm house and sleep there.
The polite next step would be to approach our neighbour's carer about this, but how? I am not sure whether to ask outright 'can we adopt your outdoor cat please? She has a home with us.' or to drop them a note saying 'you should know she hangs out with us all day, if M ever does go into care then please consider us as a first option for the cat's rehoming'... or something different?
Any advice or thoughts would be welcome. Sorry this was long, thank you for reading.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/cuwljc/advice_needed_re_neighbours_cat_uk/
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