This is a story about a cat owner who wisely and bravely took matters into his own hands and recovered his allegedly stolen cat. Most of the time this is best course of action in order to avoid the possibility of protracted arguments and even going to court.
There are three parties to this interesting story: the cat’s owner who I have decided is a man. His grandparents and the neighbours who stole the cat. They all appear to live in the same large apartment block or condominium in the USA.
To keep their cat anonymous, they call him Fluffbutt in this story. Fluffbutt has an allergy to cereals. He is a full-time indoor cat who’s scared of strangers.
The owner was doing up his kitchen and Fluffbutt was upset so they placed him with his grandparents in their apartment. Unfortunately, he escaped from his grandparents’ apartment. His grandparents tried to find him but couldn’t, so they called the owner for help.
He knocked on doors and ask the neighbours but none of them had Fluffbutt until he came to one door behind which the neighbours would not respond to his door ringing and door knocking. But he could hear Fluffbutt meowing. He said that Fluffbutt has a very particular meow which he can recognise.
Anyway, the neighbours would not release Fluffbutt to his owner, which in my book constitutes theft. The owner took matters into his own hands which was the right thing.
He went back to this apartment in the middle of the night and rang the doorbell and knocked on the door to get them out of bed. I guess he wanted to create a commotion to force them to open the door. It worked.
When they opened the door Fluffbutt darted out and up to the front door of his grandparents’ apartment where he waited. As soon as Fluffbutt dashed out of this apartment his owner stopped talking to the alleged “thieves”. He abandoned the conversation as I understand it.
He went up to his grandparents’ apartment to let Fluffbutt in and decided to stay there for a while to reassure Fluffbutt. As it happens, it appears that the alleged thieves had provided a food type for Fluffbutt which caused his allergy to resurface because he had scratched himself due to itching.
After that disturbing night-time episode, the alleged thieves went around to the grandparents’ apartment and knocked on their door demanding “their cat” back. They said that their child was missing Fluffbutt after she had “found him”. Fluffbutt’s owner told them to go away. And he explained that they had stolen Fluffbutt and not found him.
The neighbours argued that he had no right to wake them up by ringing the doorbell and banging on their door in the middle of the night. He became tired of the conversation and closed the door in their faces. He stayed at his grandparents with Fluffbutt for a few days to make sure all was well and that the neighbours wouldn’t come back to try and ‘steal’ him again.
He was criticised by some of his grandparents’ neighbours who called him an asshole. For this reason, he went on to the Reddit.com website where he is a user and asked the community whether he genuinely was an asshole.
Like me, they said that he wasn’t. And they are correct. I said that he did a great job. He was smart and sensible. He did what was needed in that moment. And there was a particularly pressing need to get Fluffbutt back quickly because of his allergy to certain food ingredients of which the alleged thieves were unaware. Direct action was required.
There have been quite a few documented thefts of cats under very similar circumstances which have often led to protracted arguments and sometimes court cases in order to recover their cat. It can be a nightmare. And it doesn’t seem to matter if the cat is micro-chipped with up-to-date details.
The problem is that the thieves have possession of your cat. That gives them the upper hand. It can be very hard to take possession back without sometimes going to court where the outcome can be uncertain. Judges or magistrates are ill-equipped to deal with these matters.
Also, up-to-date microchip details do not necessarily provide firm evidence that the person stated in those details is the owner. In other words, microchips are not necessarily evidence of ownership. To short-circuit all that potential hassle and simply take possession without resorting to physical violence of any sort is a very wise thing to do.
