So earlier this summer we had a stray cat start hanging around the neighborhood. We thought she had been left behind by a neighbor that had moved out earlier this spring. She was hungry enough to start trying to eat the bread we set out for the birds, so we started feeding her. She had always been really shy before, but lately she's stated to get really friendly.

She'll follow us around the yard, greet us when we get home, and jump in our laps when we sit outside. We're planning on getting her spayed and hopefully start introducing her to our current cats pretty soon.



Has anyone else ever taken in a stray animal?

Or adopted from a shelter?

Awww! She's cute. Our neighbors moved and left their cat. The poor thing had a broken leg and was half starved. We took her to a vet and started taking care of her. She's now our family's baby.

Awhh! What kind of horrible person would leave such a cute cat behind. :C

I only adopt pets from shelters or people who want to get rid of them. :) Both of my bunnies and the three I had before them. And my cat is the friendliest, prettiest feline ever, who was totally neglected by his previous owner and had to go to a shelter because he was moving abroad... He didn't even try to find the cat a home, his sister did all the work because she didn't want him to end up in a shelter. So eventually I decided to take him in. He's a two year old Sacred Birman with a pedigree, and when I got him you could see through his long fur that he was stick thin and had bald spots on his sides. Turned out he was still being fed kitten kibble, and the owner never dewormed him in those two years while he did give the cat raw bits of fish and meat once in a while - when I took him to the vet, she said his belly was hard because it was so full of worms. :( Also, his fur doesn't tangle a bit - I only comb him once in a while to avoid hair sticking to all of my clothes and furniture, but hardly ever encounter a tangle. Still, the old owner's vet feared he would have to shave Goliath clean because his fur was too knotted up to fix in certain places. :( He managed to just cut out the biggest knots and then left it to me to manage what was left. Turned out the guy was rarely home as well, so the poor cat spent most of his time alone in an apartment.

This is what the fuzzy furball looks like now. <3

@ Shini: What a cute cat! I'm glad that it's warming up to you. Usually I try not to go near adult cats in fear of them being feral. But if she had a previous owner like you think, then it's not a big deal. The friendlier stray cats in my apartment complex are never really "Strays" but rather an indoors/outdoors cat where the owner is too lazy for a collar.

One time I had a cute orange kitty rub up all over my leg. My boyfriend and I wanted to keep him but he was friendly to the point where we were certain he was someone's cat. He had no collar, no microchip, but he did have a botched fix-job. We ended up turning him in to the shelter where he got claimed the next day. Next week we saw him outside still without a collar.. it was like the owner never learned their lesson from the first time he got "lost". Shoulda kept the darn thing rather than pay 10 bucks to have it admitted to the shelter.

My first cat, Ezio was a street kitty. I think he was abandoned at about eight weeks old. He is a very shy guy.
imgur: the simple image sharer <- Ezio
My other cat Pancakes was from the Humane Society. She has breathing problems and she's a glutton but I her.

I think everyone should look to adopting a pet rather than buying one. There are too many cute animals and not enough homes! D:<

I didn't realise there were people cruel enough to leave a pet behind when moving.

Originally Posted by Ling

I didn't realise there were people cruel enough to leave a pet behind when moving.

Oh, they are. I live on the first floor, the downstairs apartment has a little back yard. When we moved in, I noticed a cat in there, and the downstairs neighbour came out and explained that the previous resident had owned the cat. It spends a lot of time outside, and when that guy moved out, he told the new resident to "keep the cat" because "cats don't like moving to a new environment". I felt sorry for it and immediately liked our neighbour for taking care of this abandoned animal... and then he in turn moved out about a month ago, and I still see the same cat coming into the back yard downstairs sometimes to wait for food.

That's really sad...poor creature...

There are a lot of indoor/outdoor cats where I live.

Just the other day a couple tried to adopt my friends' cat off the street (he'd wiggled free of his collar)...so they took it to the vet to get it shots and whatnot and the vet checked for a microchip and thats how my friends' got him back.

@ Volcuria: Aww, he's adorable. Soooo fluffy. I'm glad you got all of his health problems straitened out. He looks like such a sweetheart. I'll never understand why people get animals if they're not going to put in the effort to care for them properly.

We haven't seen anything on Mickey (that's what we've decided to call her, btw. I don't think I mentioned it before) we think we need to worry about yet. She was a little skinny, but she's put on some weight since we've been feeding her regularly.

@Ling: It happens all the time. We adopted another cat, Barney, that has been abandoned by her owners when they moved. This was way back when we lived in Texas, so I was about two. It's kinda a funny story, cause she literally just walked in through our front door. We had just adopted another cat, Moonie, from the shelter for my birthday. He's was an indoor/outdoor cat and would always meow at the door when he wanted to come in. I don't remember myself since I was only two, but apparently my mom heard meowing at he door once and went to open it, thinking it was Moonie. Turns out, it was Barney and Mom didn't realize it until her and Moonie started hissing at each other in the living room. XD They were both mostly grey so she didn't notice it was a different cat at first.

I never understand why people just leave pets behind. I don't even understand people that get pets in the first place when they have to know they aren't ready. To me, getting a pet means committing to that animal's entire life. So, my friends that get cats and then post on facebook that they're moving and can't take the cat to the new apartment just don't make any sense to me. Why get the cat or dog in the first place if you knew that you'd be unwilling to pay more to live somewhere that lets you keep it? I guess its just a rant but I see it so much. Friends trying to give away animals to other friends, then finding no one and deciding not to take the animals to no kill shelters. Its just sad to me.

My fiance and I would like to get our future dog from a shelter. It's all going to depend though. We know we'll be living in apartments and apartments typically have breeds for animals they allow and don't allow as well as weight limits. breeds can't always be 100% verified from shelters so I'll have to see. once we get one though, its ours for its life. That's one thing shaun and I have definitely agreed on. we'll always be willing to pay more to keep our animals.

I got one of my cats in pretty much the same way. I'm not entirely sure where she came from, but she kind of just showed up around the neighborhood one day and started coming to eat the food that we sat out for the other strays. (Unfortunately I could never adopt any of them, because they were all male and I already owned a very territorial male cat. We fed them every day and would take them to the vet if they ever seemed to need any medical attention, though, so they more or less became our outdoor cats.)

Pretty much all of my cats have been strays; I adopted one as a kitten after his mother happened to have kittens on my cousin's front porch, and another was a stray who was wandering around outside my dad's shop that a customer almost ran over and brought to us.

The cat you found is really pretty, by the way; there was actually a stray that used to hang around my house at one point that looked very similar.

Our cats are all rescues. Max our oldest we saved from a friend's house where the kids were beating him up so we took him in. Pooky was given to us by another friend, Peanut Butter and Jelly we took in from my step sister when her landlord wouldn't allow them, Misty we got from the vets when we had the horrible luck of having to put down a 1 month old kitten we got from a shelter. The shelter gave loads of cats away and it turned out they all had an incurrable feline virus. So our vet gave us Misty who just came in from a litter of other kittens. Jimmy our newest we got after our old cat Fred died. Jimmy also came from our vet.

Our cats are never pure breads and we always spay and nuter them when it's time.

The only rescue cat we had problems with was Fred who I saved from my friend's dad who was going to shoot him along with their other cats. Fred was never nutered and funny thing they thought Fred was a she and was originally named Blondy. So when we got Fred we took him to the vets to get nutered and given shots and we found out Fred was a HE! But since he was nutered so late in life he kept on spraying and never stopped. But we loved him and made sure he was always comfterble even though he would spray things that would get us upset lol! He died of old age around this time of year last year poor guy!

All my pets were strays at one point or otherwise unwanted. I also used to do a lot of rescue work.

One of the worst story was a baby bearded dragon that I got from a lady that got him for her 8 year old son to "take care" of. When I got him, he had metabolic bone disease, a preventable disease where the bones aren't hard enough because of lack of calcium. His back legs were like rubber and his jaw was so soft he could hardly eat. I had to hand feed him and give him liquid calcium until his bones hardened. He was so skinny when I got him and so weak he could barely lift his head. It's disgusting that people can let a living thing get to that point. I'm just glad she brought the dragon to me and that he was able to be saved. I had him for about a year before I felt he was healthy enough to go to another home. He stayed on the smaller side for a dragon but was otherwise healthy.

The whole thing really upset me more because I used to work at a pet store and the associate that sold the dragon didn't know anything about lighting and was misinformaed about how much a baby dragon should eat. Poor baby did have a proper UV light that had enough UV output, he was kept in a 10 gallon, which is WAY too small for a dragon of any age, and his heat lamp was nowhere near as warm as it should have been so he was basically freezing all the time and dying a slow painful death.

My kitties were all found as strays. My twin boys were found after someone shot and killed their mother. I had to raise them from the time they were about three days old, before their eyes even opened. I ended up keeping them because I fell in love with them and my other cats ended up getting attached to them, which was odd for the one girl cat I had at the time. She hated every other animal I ever brought home.

I ended up one time with a box on my front porch a few springs ago after Easter. I thought it was weird and when I opened it there were three rabbits inside. I ended up rehoming them to my mom's friend. I have a fenced in yard and that same spring, I had someone dump three baby chicks in my yard. My mom still has the two that were hens, the rooster went to live on a farm. It's like one person knows I'm an animal person and everyone knows. I never did find out who left the box of rabbits or the chickens.

People still try to give me unwanted pets even though I haven't done much rescue work in a few years due to work. I feel bad but I just can't spend time with animals that need special care like I used to. I also do not have the money like I used to. Vet costs, even at cost are ridiculously expensive and a lot of the animals I'd take in had injuries, were too young and needed hand raised, or were sick and otherwise would have just been put down and not given a chance.

Aww.. I read that as "adopt a stingray"
My first dog was a stray that was found by the animal shelter. My dad adopted her for my mom while he was working. She became my gaurd dog when I was born and my best friend as I grew up. That dog lived to be 16 years old. Our second dog was the same type of mix breed as the first but came from an oops litter.

I know Larele: (hopefully she logs in the next few days) once brought in a stray kitten about 3 weeks old. She might be able to give some input?

Though my grandparents (not just grandfather) have/had been feeding a stray that would get close but never let them touch her. So it's a case by case of the cat's personality I guess.

Aw! She's so pretty! I love her coat's color/pattern! My cat was adopted from the ASPCA. I feel really happy that we were able to give our kitty a new home. I hope you have some wonderful times with your new addition!

My kitten Kyo (who is named so because he is orange and has a HUGE temper, though lately he's been better about it) was a stray. We found him in a box down the road, he was the only one of the 13 kittens to survive, even the mother cat died. The box was taped up and we thought it fell off the truck that had a bunch of stuff -the people were obviously moving. So we stopped and opened it, hoping there would be something to ID them by and we found the poor little things in the corner. Except Kyo. He was in the middle by his mom. We took him home and I nursed him back to full health. He's a very loving cat now when he isn't challenging me as to who gets to sit in the sunken in spot of the giant arm chair. 'Adopting' him was the greatest, most rewarding thing I've ever done. This winter on the nineth he'll have been part of my family for 3 years.

My Dad found a mommy cat and her kitten on his back porch. he says they adopted him but dose not know where they came form. my dad leaves them a lone since they are strays he thinks. but the odd thing is sometimes he'll find chicken bones. on the back porch he dose not know where they get it form.


I use to have a neighbor that would take in stray cats. even try take care of them try befriend them. I all ways tough about getting a stray dog are kitten someday.

Most of the animals I've had were strays we took in. Unfortunately, I lived on a highway, and despite our efforts to keep our pet on a chain, they usually ended up getting loose, and getting hit.

Right now, I have two cats. The first, Aly, is a calico that was coming around my dad's house when I lived with him. When I moved out, I took her with me, got her spayed. The other one, a little furball named Ein, is from my father's cat's litter.

My cat was also an abandoned stray before I took him in. At first I just thought he was an outside kitty who had wandered into my yard, but then after I saw him a few times, I noticed how freakishly skinny he was (his super long fur made it hard to notice at first). Then I noticed how he was absolutely infested with fleas - poor baby could barely sit still for a minute, he was itching so bad. The final clue was when I found that he had eaten a rabbit. House cats tend to catch wild prey like that, and they might nibble on them, but since they're not hungry, they don't really eat the catch. He ate almost the whole thing, though.

So I brought him in, got his fleas taken care of, dewormed him, brushed out his knots, and he started putting on weight quickly. He weighed around 9 pounds when I brought him in, and the vet said his ideal weight was somewhere around 14-15 (BIG kitty). A few months later I discovered that he had diabetes, so now he also gets twice daily insulin shots and special food. It's expensive, but he's such a sweet baby, he's worth it. I'm convinced he wouldn't have survived much longer if I hadn't taken him in. Here are two pictures of him - one when I first found him outside, and one more recent:


See the difference?

His name is Sammy, by the way!

How do you give him the insulin shots?

Sammy looks just like my cat Peanut Butter! I mean 100% exact! Their species are Main Coons which grow really big! They are the best though! They love humans, try to be humans, and take care of humans when they are ill! I love my main coons~!

Poet - As you might know, insulin shots don't go into veins, they just go into skin - a lot of diabetic humans do their injections in their bellies for that reason. For cats, you generally do it on the scruff of their necks, because there's a lot of loose skin there and fewer nerve endings. You just grab some of that loose skin and pull it up, and inject into that. It's uncomfortable for the kitty, but much better than with no insulin at all!

Minako - I don't think Sammy's a maine coon - he isn't quite big enough, and doesn't have the right facial features, paws, or coat. He might be part maine coon, though, who knows! I'd love to see a picture of your Peanut Butter!

I see. So the same way one of our cats had to get fluid shots before she passed away (she was dehydrating really bad)