>>>>We took on 3 rescue cats almost 3 yrs ago who had to be kept together and were 9 and 11 yrs old then. We only went to get one cat but these had been at the RSPCA for 6 weeks and because they were old and so very scared of strangers, no-one wanted them.
Mr pda was at home at the time unergoing chemo and we really didn't want any extra worry but we both felt so sorry for them.
We took them home and Gus ( Siamese neutered Tom) bonded with him straight away and they went through the bad times together with Gus never leaving his side.
What an excellent therapy it wa for Mr pda too, he suddenly had a reason to make himself feel a bit better.
Katie ( long haired alleycat female) and Tottie ( siamese female) lived behind any furniture they could find for 6 weeks only coming out to feed and use the litter tray at night but they had lived together all their lives and eventually they realised that Gus trusted us and they soon began follow suit.:)
Sadly we lost Tottie to congenital heart disease last January after very expensive, but worthwhile vets treatment and we still miss her so much.
The family is incomplete because the came as a package and part of it is missing.
<<<<<
I posted the above a few weeks ago and it saves me typing it all out again!
The problem is we have been adopted by a grumpy, angry unneutered ginger tom.
He's alway passed through our garden, and I suspect let himself in through the catflap when we've been at work.
Last winter we felt sorry for him and put a catflap in the shed for him with food, water and a warm bed.
He didn't want that, he wants to live in the house.
In the early days we used to try and break up fights with him and Gus in the garden and on one occasion he actually turned on me! Gus is a Siamese and is huge but Ginger ( as we call him) is fearless.
He's now taken up residence in a spare bedroom on the bed, it's his room and wo betide Gus and Katie if they go near it. The fights always start when he wants to come down stairs and Gus will sit at the bottom and taunt him.
A couple of weeks ago we decided that since he's 'moved in' the best way may be to make his bedroom his own, and make him welcome! He's now got his own food, water and litter tray upstairs in an effort to stop the fights, but that isn't good enough.
He now wants to feed with the other two and be with us in the evenings around the house.
All this is undertaken with an air of disdain and anger from Ginger but a determination to get his own way ( which he does by fair means or fowl)
We've had 3 expensive visits to the vet for Gus because of fighting wounds and I'd prefer this not to continue!
Ginger lives somewhere because he wears a collar, and he lost it once in our garden and appeared the next day with a brand new one, but none of the neighbours will admit to owning him.
The thing is, we went to the CPL and RSPCA a couple of weeks ago to get another cat to replace Totty, but after explaining the situation with Ginger, they confirmed our suspicions that it would be far too traumatic getting a strange cat to live with Gus and Katie after them being together for so long, without the added problem of Ginger.
If we took him to the vet and had him checked over and neutered, would we be in the wrong?
The thing is, it looks very much like he has moved in for good and only goes home to gloat about his better home.
And to be honest, we have warmed to his grumpiness and he's a bit of a challenge after all.
I think he's never been loved, and because of that he has a huge chip on his shoulder and is defensive so why can't him and Gus just accept each other?
Help!!
Pat
Edited by Pugugly on 28/11/2009 at 08:12
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A short reply to a long and interesting post. IMO it can never be a bad thing to have a tom neutered unless you want to breed from him. It will/may reduce the agression for a start!
Edited by Pugugly on 28/11/2009 at 08:13
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But where do we stand with the cat's owners if we do this?
Pat
Edited by Pugugly on 28/11/2009 at 08:13
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How will they ever know?
Edited by Pugugly on 28/11/2009 at 08:13
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What I would do (using Vulcan logic) is this ...
You say his owner fitted a new collar so he clearly does belong to someone, so I would (in some way) attach a note to his collar so as his owners would see it - you could just write your ph. no. and ask them to contact you.
THEN, if you don't hear from them after a reasonable time - give him 'the snip'
Edited by Pugugly on 28/11/2009 at 08:14
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Pat say the cat was re-collared in a day, which suggests he has owners who are still taking an interest in him.
On that basis, it wouldn't be quite right to carry out an irreversible operation.
How will the owners ever know? Well, wouldn't even a cursory examination give them a clue?
Edited by Pugugly on 28/11/2009 at 08:14
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throw him out. I really cant see how anyone can be concerned about a cat that has invaded your life, caused you and your other house cats a shed load of agro, and give you absolutely nothing in return.
When my wife throws me out, Ok if I come round and raid your fridge, use your shower, watch your tele and use your bed?
you are being taken for a ride, not your cat, not your problem, chuck the disruptive squatter out.
Edited by Altea Ego on 28/11/2009 at 08:41
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Quite right Altea - but it doesn`t take into account Pat`s generosity towards all animals and her obvious warm heart.
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...it doesn`t take into account Pat`s generosity towards all animals and her obvious warm heart...
I think the cat understands Pat's nature better than AE does. :)
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IMO it can never be a bad thing to have a tom neutered .......... It will/may reduce the agression for a start!
The cat which adopted us won't let us pick it up, so I can't see the vet even being able to get it onto his operating table!
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Tazer, stun gun? The vets must have something. I do accept the point re neutering a cat that isn't yours but if it is living in your house, eating your food, sleeping there and annoying the human and feline residents, most of the time. it would seem to one possible course of action. Perhaps the cat flap activated by a magnet on the collar of approved entrants would be the way forward?
Staywell 932 Magnetic Cat Flap Locking Pet Door White
Buy new: £22.99
In stock at Amazon
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Tazer stun gun? The vets must have something.
We fully accept that the cat which has adopted us is now ours. It arrived about 18 months ago as a young cat. It comes and goes as it pleases via a cat-flap at the end of the porch, and sleeps either on a worktop or in a sort of kennel depending on the temperature. It gets fed in the porch and obviously considers that that's its home. It rubs around our legs, enjoys being stroked and brushed, and follows us everywhere in the garden. It sometimes rolls on its back and exposes its underside which I gather is a sign that it trusts us. But it just won't let us pick it up, and demonstrates its dislike to this by a quick bite or scratch of the offending hand. We're going to have to find some way of enticing it into a cat basket at ground level in order to be able to take it to the vet to be doctored.
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But it just won't let us pick it up and demonstrates its dislike to this by a quick bite or scratch of the offending hand.
IF you pick it up by the scruff of the neck (the area between the ears just back from the top of its head) then it will be unable to bite or scratch you.
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You are anthropomorphizing as I'm sure you know - you have imagined a life story of neglect and psychological damage. You might equally imagine he is the Ronnie Kray of cats - do you want him anywhere near your well behaved pets? You are clearly a kind person and an animal lover but he has no need of your care and affection - he already has an attentive owner by the sound of it.
Do what you have to do to exclude him. If you can't deter him, or get his owners to keep him away, then an 'intelligent' cat flap will be a lot cheaper than the vet's bills.
On no account should you have it castrated, it's not your cat! - though you might contact the owners and suggest they do.
Auntie.
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Be very careful what you do to someone else's animal. It is viewed as "property" under the Theft Act and you could face consequences.
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Aren't cats 'wild animals'?
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...Aren't cats 'wild animals'?...
If you neuter one, I'd expect it to be very wild. :)
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>>Be very careful what you do to someone else's animal. It is viewed as "property" under the Theft Act and you could face consequences
By the same token you have no business keeping it at your house and feeding it, particularly now you are aware that it has an owner (looking at it from said owner's point of view).
If you think it's hard on the interloper, consider your own cats. It is dominating them, injuring them and may well bring in some nasty disease from its night time roaming.
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If your cats have a collar I'd go for the locking cat flap option.
Or as someone says attach a note the ginger cat's collar and try to get in touch with owners.
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...Be very careful what you do to someone else's animal. It is viewed as "property" under the Theft Act and you could face consequences...
It was always said you did not have to report running over and killing a cat, but you did have to report killing a dog.
The reasoning was that a dog could be a working animal, and losing it could affect the owner's livelihood.
This leaves us with the slightly absurd situation that stealing someone else's cat is illegal, but killing it is not.
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Thanks for the advice but I'm not prepared to try and get our two elderly cats to wear collars ( which I don't like anyway) at their age.
I can't evict him as he just walks in the catflap, I'm not keeping him against his will as he goes out when he wants to.
My theory is that his collars have a bell on them, and his grumpyness is caused by his frustration at never being able to hunt and stalk unheard.
He's a cat with attitude, he's a cat after my own heart.
If everyone had given up on me every time I'd been stubborn and determined I wouldn't be where I am now.
Our two cats have to learn that when they came to live with us, we went to get one cat......................and came back with three, because there's always room for one more.
Attaching a note to his collar with a phone number sounds a good idea, if only we dare!
This morning saw Mr pda armed with a cushion, myself armed with a bathroom mat like a matador and Ginger in the middle swearing at everyone and refusing to go out.:)
I think he's misunderstood at home.
Pat
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I'm not prepared to try and get our two elderly cats to wear collars ( which I don't like anyway)
I don't like to see cats wearing collars either. Not since seeing a cat hang itself from a tree branch. For me a collar on an animal is for one thing and one thing only - to attach a lead to and take for a walk. I can't recall ever seeing anyone take a cat for a walk.
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I completely agree about cats not wearing a collar - easy to microchip - mine have never had one.
>>My theory is that his collars have a bell on them..>>
Although I appreciate why some people do it, it's cruel to fit a bell to a cat's collar as it completely disorientates the animal due to its remarkable hearing ability.
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I can't recall ever seeing anyone take a cat for a walk.
No, nor me but my son takes his Guinea Pig for a walk on its special harness and lead. I have tried to persuade him that it's just a very small vegetarian dog but he doesn't believe me. It only cost a tenner.....
I haven't tried walking it to the pub yet but I'm tempted.
;-)
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Pat, the best of luck! It's a familiar story and I'm not too far away from this situtation myself at the moment, with a Tom with full tackle who is clearly trying to move in. After one fight he was limping, so after waiting for owners to do something and no action 24 hours later, we took him to the vet. He's not chipped - have you checked "yours"?
In my limited experience they eventually all get on, by some tactical ignoring.
JH
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Now there's a thought JH, but first we have to get him in a mood where we can pick him up, then get him in a cat basket.
H&S risk assesment needed before that :)
He's at the moment, asleep on a his spare bed pillow, so we've decided to try and talk and stroke him whenever we go upstairs, to try and make him feel part of the family.
Usually he enjoys this, but tonight he bit me!
BUT, he could be in pain and that's why I'd like to get him to the vets.
I get the feeling that he's mostly lived outdoors and he's beginning to look a lot better now with a shiny, smooth coat now he isn't out in all weathers.
Our two are only being inconvenienced slightly, Katie is the Grand Old Duchess and usually ignored him but if she really wants to walk past him she just swears and does so!
Gus antagonises him on purpose sometimes and gives as good as he gets, so we'll never let them suffer because of Ginger.
But we won't give up on him either!
Pat
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>>I think he's misunderstood at home
I suspect they understand him only too well, and fail to mistake him for a human in feline form ;-)
Maybe you can get social services to take him into care.
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Thanks for the advice but I'm not prepared to try and get our two elderly cats to wear collars ( which I don't like anyway) at their age.
Ours has never had a collar and doubt if she would like one now after all these years. We had/have a cat coming in our cat flap and his owners have one of those magnetically controlled flaps so we'd have had to go for something infra-read.
In the end we started locking it at night. But he still came in.
Originally, when young he was quite sweet but then we started waking up and he was on the bed! And the owners were annoyed once when he was sat in the front window looking out (we didn't realise). So we started shooing him out.
He also started marking walls in the lounge! He went missing recently. We asked if the owners had found him.... the children said he was dead! We felt terrible.
I'm with you on this pat. Don't throw him out but try to get him to like the other cats. Don't know how though.
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particularly now you are aware that it has an owner
A lot of cats have more than one "owner"
A few years ago we adopted a stray cat. Turns out quite a few of the neighbours also adopted the same cat. She had at least 6 different names. That was one pampered moggie I can tell you.
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We have a cat. A well-behaved smallish black spayed female (had a litter first though). It adores my wife and sprawls on her work, which involves large typescripts and wads of galleys, attempting to choke her laptop by lying on the warm exhaust grille. It hustles for food quite often too.
It really belongs to one of our grandchildren but they live in a flat so it can't get outside, and the place is a bit crowded with nippers for a litter tray to be viable. So we got lumbered. It has two cat flaps in the outer and inner back basement doors. Other cats used to come in the house, so a trick door was obtained and the cat now wears a small round magnet on a collar. It tends to stick to steel objects and pick them up too, to the cat's great alarm and confusion. Silly damn animal.
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I'm with AE on this, sling him out and give him the heave ho whenever he gets within striking distance.
This opportunist 'cuckoo' is making your existing cats lives a misery, and you'll get no joy with him imo.
If your aim is good the polishing effect of his backside will save considerable expenditure on kiwi for your steel toe caps:-)
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Water pistol, or even a container of water, dip your index finger in it and flick it at the offending moggie.
I refused to eat my dinner with daughter's cat walking around the table top. To the indignation of the cat and daughter's surprise, it learnt very quickly.
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www.cats.org.uk/catcare/leaflets/EG10-Catsandthela...f
An useful looking document. Cats are "property" and you can be convicted for killing them.
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Surprising, how much interest this has generated - on a motoring forum!
What about keeping the spare bedroom door closed? Sorry if this has been mentioned, I haven't read every post.
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Interesting reading PU. Thanks.
Pat
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Speaking as the former owner of a tom which strayed :
- Stop feeding it !
You will also need to lock the cat flap, especially at night, and cover it with something so the stray cannot see inside.
Our cat was also known for stealing cat toys from a neighbour's kitchen and bringing them home.
They hate sprays of any kind, and a water spray is harmless.
You will need to actively discourage it.
If you take someone else's cat to the vet, they are obliged to contact the owner.
In the end, we signed over our straying tom to a neighbour 50 yards away.
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Why should I lock the cat flap and restrict our 2 cats from having the freedom they love after being in the RSPCA kennels for so long?
They have food down as they want it and I'm not prepared to stop that either.
The ideal situation would be to find the owners and ask them to sign him over to us but none of the neighbours are admitting to owning him.
It's not hard to see why!
Pat
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One way around it would be to print an ad in the local freesheet asking the owner to come forward and claim the cat as it is a "Nuisance" giving them 28 days to respond or you assume the rights of the owner,. Back it up with hand delivered flyers. These are "reasonable steps" to identify the owner..
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PU, you are a little genius:)
We have a village magazine called Doddington's Doings and it's delivered free to every house in the village. I have just emailed a slightly humourous piece in for the next one asking for Gingers 'other' owners to get in touch for a chat.
At least we've just had Decembers delivered so he's assured of a nice warm Christmas!
Pat
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PU you are a little genius:) We have a village magazine called Doddington's Doings and it's delivered free to every house in the village. I have just emailed a slightly humourous piece in for the next one asking for Gingers 'other' owners to get in touch for a chat.
Are you serious? The owner is glad to get shot of the little thug, no way are they going to chirp up and claim him.
If someone leaves an annonymous bottle of scotch on your doorstep you know you have been dun up like a kipper.
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Are you serious? The owner is glad to get shot of the little thug, no way are they going to chirp up and claim him.
I took it that Pat wanted to find the owner and perhaps wants to "adopt" the cat.
Another solution if you did want to stop the cat coming in but not have a locked cat flap for your cats is.... if your cats are chipped you can get a cat flap that reads the chips in the cat and only let your cats in.
www.microchipcatflaps.co.uk/
I wish I'd known about these before today. I'd have got one! But we're moving in a few weeks so no use now. £127 is not cheap but might be a good buy. I only stumbled across it because thinking of chipping our car in case she wanders off from the temporary accommodation one day. I was trying to find out how much it costs to chip a cat. She's never worn a collar and at 14 it would be unfair to do so now.
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Yes, I feel it would be very unfair too.
I didn't know about the microchip cat flap though. Both of ours are chipped as they were from te RSPCA.
Thanks for that link, but I don't think we could bear to listen to him wailing outside in the cold now, specially as it may well be aching bones that make him grumpy.
Pat
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>> The ideal situation >>
Wouldn't the ideal situation be for the squatter to go back to its rightful owners?
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Stop indulging it pda. A water pistol, and a firm hand. I have "acquired" two stray cats (definitely properly stray). They wouldn't DARE step inside the house, even if the door is open. But I'm used to dealing with dogs, and treat them in exactly the same way.
And the local branch of Celia Hammond Animal Trust neutered them for free - and kept them in for a week... (and offered to provide free pet food in perpetuity...!!!)
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I would do exactly the same for a dog MM:)
>>> and kept them in for a week... <<<
and then you out them out in the cold?
How could you? :)
FT
He makes me happy, so don't be hard on him!
Pat
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FT He makes me happy so don't be hard on him!
I'm not, but he does seem to be causing you (not to mention your resident animals) problems. I'm sure he wouldn't want his machinery interfered with, either.
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cat! - though you might contact the owners
Do cats actually have owners? If I flatten one on the road, AFAIK I'm not required to stop, which I am if I hit a dog.
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Sounds to me as though this cat's overdue for going on a holiday somewhere a long way away.
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