This person in my city had their cat taken by their neighbor(who "thought it was a stray" and had been feeding it) who took it too the shelter, where it was held for a couple days and immediately put up for a adoption.

They found pictures on a pet adoption website but when they reached out to the shelter they said the cat had already been placed with a home and they could not give any info on the new owners.

Literal worst nightmare.

@corn_dick good news everyone!

someone who saw this person's facebook post about the cat started calling the shelter and the petco/petsmart that facilitated the adoption basically to just harass them about this until they got through to someone, who said that "while legally we can't make the new owners give the cat back, we can tell them what happened and they can decide for themselves. please send us some pictures so we can confirm it's the same cat"

and the owners made the right choice!

obviously i'm really happy for the original owners but i also feel really bad for the adopters who found this cat at the shelter that they fell in love with and took home for a couple days and were probably really excited to add her to the family and then had to give her back up.

i'm sure they'll get another cat very soon but it's frustrating how many people can be hurt by these ineffective policies that animal services and the shelters have put in place.

@corn_dick guys i think about mordecai's original owners every single day. he was brought into the shelter matted, thin, and stray, no chip, but already neutered. he knew the box. he loved people. he was a housecat.

the shelter had him for months. no one wanted him, no one came to claim him. i scouted through a years worth of lost pet alerts online over the first month i had him.

did they love him, but then he got lost?
did they not love him enough, was he abandoned?

not sure what's sadder.

@corn_dick Did the cat just escape or is it an outdoor cat? Because that can be a common problem with outdoor cats, especially ones without collars (some people don't think to take them to the vet to check for a chip and idk if shelters do that as a rule) and why cats should always be indoor cats. I'm glad it has a happy ending, though. I can't imagine how heartbreaking that would be.

@chikadee indoor/outdoor. free roam but comes home at night. i agree, all my kitties are indoor cats but i can't make that decision for everyone or their cats.

personally i don't think anyone in my area should let their cats outdoors right now, there's been a serial cat killer on the loose for a couple of months now. that's why i've been checking the lost pet sites/groups so often right now.

@corn_dick Yeah there's someone in my apartment who leaves out cat food for this skinny lil thing and I wish I could find the person and ask them if it is a stray or if it's theirs. And like I would pay the pet fee if they would keep it indoors, we live near a super busy road. Also I've heard about that guy in the UK it's awful.
@chikadee unfortunately, i'm not talking about the croydon cat killer and there's actually another serial cat killer out there in the world right now. olympia, washington. the olympia cat killer. up to 12 reported as of last night.
@chikadee i'm worried that unless he gets caught, he'll eventually work his way up into the multiple hundreds like the croydon killer has though.

@corn_dick This seems to happen a fair amount and its fucking bullshit that people have no vested rights in their pets

Those pets are fucking family goddamn it

@corn_dick id be having some mother fucking words with that neighbor. And then id definitely be demanding to speak with a manager. I wish them good luck in getting their cat back. Maybe the new owners will have a better heart 😢
@corn_dick Yeah I might have teared up a little

@corn_dick that quasi-happened to my family a number of years ago. We thought we had lost one of our cats when it turns out some family just saw him, took him in and just held onto him.

Fortunately a family friend saw a photo of Mr. Cuddles at the post office and we were reunited .. but an important lesson was learned that day: don't just abduct cats you see running around in the woods.