Today I’m asking if anyone else has the occasional “that’s not my cat!” moment, when you realise there’s a cat that doesn’t belong to you, that’s made itself comfortable in your home.
I know that most of you spend your days with pets that aren’t yours, but when you’re home, do you ever have neighbourhood strays or feral cats show up for a visit? If so, how do you care for them?
Pictured is the sweet soul that’s started visiting me the last few days, I know all the local cats and this one is new to me, and based on their condition and behaviour around me, I think they may be stray.
I’d love to hear any stories you might have, especially if you’ve any photos, about those little strangers that come to visit. Share them in the replies!
When I bought my house on 3/4 acres, the houses were far enough apart where you couldn’t see the front t doors of the neighbors so couldn’t see any cats that may be indoor/outdoor cats like you could in my previous neighborhood. Plus we were on a small hill. After a month living there a large black cat shows up outside my back door and started meowing. I assumed it was a stray that the previous homeowners were feeding. I had a cat at the time and couldn’t take it in but I started feeding it. I’m a sucker for these things, ha. I noticed the cat was picky in the food I gave him. He devoured the wet fish cat food but not so much the chicken ones. This went on for 6 weeks. Then one day I am driving in the car and I see the cat laying on another neighbor’s front door mat. I went up to the door and knocked. The cat scattered when I did. They opened the door and the cat ran from the bushes in the house. I said with a surprised voice, “that’s your cat? He said yes and then told him the story. He laughed and said, I was wondering why he was putting on weight. I never fed the cat again.
I’ve had 3 experiences. I had a sit in New Zealand where the owners had no pets, but they wanted me to feed a rather unfriendly stray cat. I had two sits in Ireland, one where a stray cat rather liked the cat I was looking after and, being similar to my charge, occasionally visited through an open window. Other owners, whose cat I’ve looked after several times before, have since taken on a feral cat and gradually tamed her, although still very timid.
Hi Jenny
I have a funny story. I moved into my first house in my early 20’s. Not long after I moved in I left my front door slightly ajar for air and found a lovely mottled cat fast asleep on my sofa! She was very happy.
As I worked from home it became a thing. I asked around and found out she (Elsa was her name) belonged to a couple about 8 doors down. The couple thought it funny as Elsa would go out in the morning when they both went to work and after a bit of garden hopping end up at my door and inside for the day. She would be very comfortable sleeping on sofa while I worked!
Also gained a cat when I lived in lanzarote. He’d follow me and cry at my apartment door to be let in. Ultimately he’d sleep on my bed until 6.30am when he’d cry to be let out as he was a stray cat fed by the security guards that worked on the marina that I lived on. They called him gato (cat).
When I was at university a cat called David who lived down the road adopted our household and used to come in and hang out with us.
When I first bought my house I had a lodger who had a cat. One summer day our cleaner had been and as she was driving back home, she looked in her rear view mirror to see Sylvester staring back at her from the back seat of her car! When my lodger eventually moved into a flat with her boyfriend, Sylvester upset a couple of neighbours by climbing through open windows into their homes and surprising them on their return. His other favourite trick was lying quietly high up on top of the fridge freezer and then suddenly jumping down onto a passing person, so it may have been quite a shock - he had a real knack of identifying and terrorising anyone who didn’t like cats this way!
We did a housesit a few years back where one of the cats was very nervous of the dog and had practically moved in with the neighbours across the road. We would regularly have to pop over every evening to retrieve the cat and return him to the safety of the garage where the dog couldn’t go.
Oh yes… we’ve absolutely had a few “that’s not my cat!” moments over the years — and they always seem to arrive with complete confidence that they do, in fact, belong there.
One that still makes me smile was a tiny tabby kitten who clearly discovered the doggy door before anything else about the property. No hesitation, no reconnaissance — just straight in like it had always lived there. We’d suddenly notice this little striped shadow darting through the house, helping itself to a quiet explore, then vanishing just as quickly. It took a moment (and a double take!) to realise… hang on, that’s not one of ours.
Then there was the piebald — a much calmer soul — who chose the back corner of the hayloft as their personal retreat. We’d find them curled up there, perfectly tucked in as though they’d booked the spot well in advance. No fuss, no demands, just quietly making themselves at home in the most peaceful corner of the property.
We’ve never been quite sure whether these visitors were strays, roaming neighbours, or just very confident adventurers. Our approach has always been gentle and observant — a bit of space, a bit of kindness, and letting them set the terms of engagement.
There’s something rather lovely about being “chosen,” even temporarily, by these little wanderers. They do seem to know exactly where they’ll be safe and welcome.
Looking forward to seeing everyone else’s surprise visitors — they always come with the best stories
@Jenny, visit parts of Greece and you’ll find stray cats pretty much everywhere. At one greek housesit, our pet parent expressed an odd frustration. An unknown, likely foreign, do-gooder person would regularly leave dry food outside pet parent driveway gate … and so actively encourage stray cats
When I was in Greece and Türkiye I found all the stray cats a very depressing sight. They beg for food while you eat in outside restaurants. Some are half starving. I would always have cat food on me and feed these poor starving cats. This is what you see when you stay in neighborhoods and not in 5 star tourist hotels. You see the reality of the situations. I never saw a cat passed 3 years old. In the US we have spay, neuter and release. If they look like they are too thin they are released back into colonies where a volunteer feeds them. I watched some YouTube videos where they showed feeding stations in Türkiye but that was more in tourist areas. I stayed in different neighborhoods with families teaching conversation English to kids through Workaway. One young cat looked like it had an eye infection so I was able to catch it by putting food in a carrier I bought and I took it to a vet and had it treated but then had to release it back to the streets. Being an animal empath, this was all hard to see.
Hi Jenny, Interestingly I managed to catch a TV programme a few years ago now, so cannot rememeber all the details but they tracked quite a few cats, so as to monitor where they went in the day and night. It turned out that many visited about half a dozen other homes and each home owner thought that it was their cat and that they had adopted a stray. Most did have an original owner, who did not realise that their cat was also visiting several other homes also. So, a stray may not be a stray but just an opportunist looking for extra food and attention etc. Don’t be fooled. : - )
Not a sit tale, but when I was air crew I often went away for a few days, leaving a neighbour in charge. I once came home to find four cats slumbering beatifically on my bed. Only one of them was mine.
@SeniorSitter1, yep we’ve seen this too. And similarly with stray dogs in southern Portugal. Local THS hosts encouraged us not to provide temporary assistance to stray animals, as it can create permanent dependency - that as visiting housesitters we cannot provide. Sad.
It challenged our whole perspective on animals/pets and owners/petparents. In our experience, some hosts on THS in southern europe use neither term “pet” nevermind “pet parents”. That’s just not how they see the relationship. As one lovely THS host told us ‘they are animals that sometimes choose to live with us’. Huh, made us think.
Back to OP topic, in such cases the number and/or identity of animals at property may vary over time (not during housesit). Bold friendly stray animals and patient caring humans slowly develop trust-enough relationship - though often with open door policy so animal can leave anytime. We suspect this is an unimaginable mindset to many THS hosts in North America or UK.
Unfortunately many countries have a culture where pets are items that are disguarded once people are bored of them!
I volunteered when I live on Lanzarote for a charity (set up by an English ex-pat lady) that would work most days trapping then neutering or spaying the increasing feral cat population. There were hundreds of feral cats in some areas of a village! We’ve rehome any cats that could be rehome which was very few to be honest as most of these strays were very feral and you needed a tight grip on the cat and long gloves!
There are soooo many stray cats in Greece! The hosts I recently sat for care for over a dozen at any given time along with a litter of kittens that were so cute except for all the crying!
Such a good point about stray dogs! I didn’t think to include them as they’re not really something I see much of here in Scotland, but I know if I was somewhere with stray dogs, I’d struggle so much not to help!
On social media in the U.S., there are numbers of folks who feed strays that live in homes built on their properties. The strays come and go as they please. There are even videos on how to build such homes.
On stray cats: we visited Cyprus and there’s also quite a lot of stray cats. I found a little ‘food and water station’ outside our hotel, where there were some bags of food, some plastic 1 litre water bottles and open cat food/water. Quite a few cats lazing around the station (maybe 12?) so I topped up food, there was still plenty water but no one was drinking. Then I remembered how much cats like fresh water, so I opened a new bottle and poured a fresh ‘bucket’. Wow, it was as if I was pouring the water of life! All 12 cats immediately ducked down to drink the fresh water. Poor cats. The old water was probably sitting there for quite a while, growing things, and no one thought to pour fresh water as it looked fine. It’s sad.
