For the record, he's desexed, microchipped and as much as we have always wanted him to be an inside cat, he has different ideas! If Spike's locked inside and a window's open, he'll shred the flyscreen to let himself out.
So how did we find out that Spike (above) was dining elsewhere? Okay, so, approx 12 months ago when little Lily came to live with us, Spike wasn't altogether pleased. However, he got over it, after all, we did get Lily so that he'd have company because he's quite a social cat! As you know, it turned out that Lily had Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP) and passed away.
During the early days of Lily moving in with us, Spike disappeared for one or two nights here and there. To be quite honest, I wasn't concerned. Spike can be moody and will vanish down the stormwater drains like a gutter rat, however, he always gets over whatever his problem is and comes home.
So we adopted two 5-month-old sibling cats recently (which I've not written a post about yet!) and again he disappeared - which we expected until he got used to them. However, there was a difference this time, even when Spike goes walkabout, he'll still be spotted in the front/backyard, or under one of our cars, or he'll come in overnight and eat the food that we leave for him.
So we've had the two new kitties for about a month now, which has been plenty of time for Spike to get annoyed, disappear and come back home. Except for this week, we hadn't seen him for two solid days and he hadn't been home to eat for three nights.
There's one house diagonally behind us, we've never met the owner but about 3 weeks ago I did see Spike on the fence on his way in that direction. I also knew that yard didn't have any dogs. So we decided to go around and introduce ourselves to the owner and ask if they'd seen our cat.
The owner of the house is an 82-year-old woman, she invited us into her house as she said she did have a "stray" in her yard. She told us the cat wasn't there at the moment but described him as a grey cat. She told us that she owned a male tabby cat named Albert, that she had from a kitten and another grey "stray" female that she'd named "Visy" - short for Visiting Cat. (Spike below).
I'll cut a very long story short as we were at her house for at least an hour! "Visy" showed *her* face at the back door. My wife was first to see our Spike looking back at us through this woman's door! My wife said, "Um, there's my cat!". I turned around to see Spike! The woman, who had been quite demure to this point sternly said "No. That's My Visy". I stepped out into her yard and picked up Spike and stated that Spike was, in fact, our cat. One thing the woman stated before Spike appeared was, that she had never been able to get close enough to pat this cat, except on the head. The fact that I just picked him up spoke volumes!
Again, long story short - It turns out that she has been feeding Spike for approx 6.5 years! She's also feeding someone else's cat as well! She made a point of saying that she was feeding them because they were in her yard although it was clear to her that neither were underfed and did belong to other people! WTF! She also bought a bed for him, which is located right next to the food bowl!
It has now been five days since Spike has been home. I believe she has put him inside her house. I should also mention that it was pointed out to her that Spike has health conditions that need to be monitored. I don't think she realises just how wrong what she's doing is! My wife and I are now in a situation where we have to try and figure out how do we get our cat back?!?!? Is it no wonder I've got one ripper of a headache!
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