Advice please re: assumed stray cat where o comes forward a month later

RE: Advice please re: assumed stray cat where o comes forward a month later

Calli D — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 12:23:25 GMT

Thankyou everyone. They still use an exercise book here too but the info in it is basic so may need to tweek it a bit. I re-read through my notes and it seemed the cat had been hanging around for about a year rather than months, and I had also emailed him. I will contact Anibase to check if a letter or email was sent out - Thank you Sal.

I will try and keep my reply shortish and to the point. hopefully they will sort it out amongst themselves.

Thanks everyone x

RE: Advice please re: assumed stray cat where o comes forward a month later

Sal the 1st — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 09:45:48 GMT

as the VDS have been involved might be an idea to run your email by them before sending? or maybe they could advise you on what to put? Be careful of 'digging yourself in deeper' in case this turns into a civil dispute.

Did the owner report the cat as missing to Anibase? If he had then it would have flagged on their system when you checked the chip with them.

I know the owner contacted you but there are other steps he could have taken to help recover this cat - its not fair to lay the blame at your door.

Did the owner receive the registered notification from Anibase? - Anibase should be able to tell you when it was sent and if it was registered would have been signed for or returned, this should have alerted the owner that his cat was playing away even if it was coming back intermittently and maybe prompted them to let people know in the vicinity that the cat was owned - I had to do this with one of mine who has a number of little old ladies he visits.

Other than what you did to try and reunite cat and owner I don't really know what else you could have done?

The fact that the owner has tracked down those that took the cat on and is in contact with them I would probably leave it to both parties to sort out between themselves. Yes an email to the owner would be nice but don't get yourself embroiled.

We still keep our lost and founds in an exercise book - its a lot easier to track them back that way - but even then its not foolproof .

I hope this works out well for you

RE: Advice please re: assumed stray cat where o comes forward a month later

Ems — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 20:19:30 GMT

I'm sorry you've had to be put in this situation, if he had kept his details up-to-date it wouldn't have happened!!

I was in a similar situation with a "stray" cat which a couple had taken on. In fairness, they had her checked for a chip and had put posters up but nothing came back. After 4 weeks they decided to keep her and brought her in to be neutered. To cut a long story short, the owner came forward a few days later and was angry that we had neutered the cat and that they had "stolen" her. The police were contacted and they classed it as a civil dispute, the cat had no form of ID so how was anyone to know?

In your situation, as someone above mentioned, I would explain the changes you have made to prevent this happening again but due to a lack of details, you were unfortunately unable to make contact with the owner in the first instance. I would also explain that you had not advised to keep the cat but that any decision they made in dealing with the "stray" was ultimately out of your hands. An apology for the error and explaining that the rest is a civil matter is basically what I would say. Such a difficult situation!

RE: Advice please re: assumed stray cat where o comes forward a month later

Celine — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 18:38:29 GMT

Oh wow... I'd advise you to stop beating yourself up over this. (I say that knowing that's virtually impossible). OK you could have read back through his notes but really why would you? It's a very unlikely scenario and unfortunately you ended up in the middle of it!

Chalk this up to experience. In the old days I'd keep an exercise book with a lost section and a found section and see if anything married up - you could start keeping a spreadsheet on the computer with the same? Then you can demonstrate to your boss (if in fact they are upset about it) that you are setting in place procedures so it can't happen again. Depending on your computer program there may also be a way to mark an animal's file with a big flashing warning or pop up message when you open their file? (we used to use this to warn about unpleasant animals / clients)

What is the situation with the original owner? Is he really angry or making a complaint or anything? You may find he's not that fussed if he's used to the cat not being around and may be content if he knows the cat is with people who care for it...

I think sometimes in this job we're thrust into positions where we end up playing a very crucial (unwanted!) role in this sort of thing - I think just quietly reflect on this but it's honestly not your fault! Sounds like most people did what they could, even the "catnappers" did bring him in to be scanned. Just very bad luck :-(

RE: Advice please re: assumed stray cat where o comes forward a month later

Calli D — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 16:15:38 GMT

Ooo lordie - sorry .. that was a long one.