I Stole My Neighbor’s Cats

He didn’t seem to notice or to get angry

This is my first cat story, so I feel a bit nervous.

I’m also afraid you will judge me for stealing my neighbor’s cats. Technically, I didn’t steal them. I just gave them affection they weren’t getting. I was at home at the beginning of the pandemic, so I started to give them some love.

Scotty and Clover had been indoor cats of my neighbor across the street. But when his wife died and he remarried a year and half later they became outdoor cats. I think my neighbor told me his new wife was allergic to cats.

My neighbor still fed the cats, but I don’t think he was a cat person.

So what is a Cat Person supposed to do when they see two cats in need of love they used to get as indoor pets from their cat mom?

I did what you’d probably do as a Cat Person. I pet the cats, whenever I saw them walking around our neighborhood. I also found myself in the pet aisle at Wal-Mart, buying snacks and cat food for them and cat toys at the pet store.

“I can’t believe you’re feeding our neighbors cats,” my wife liked to tell me.

The cats followed the love

A ritual quickly developed: After I fed them in the morning for a week, Scotty and Clover would wait outside the front door around 6 a.m. for me, and I fed them every morning and also in the evenings

They followed the love and food and started hanging out on our side of the street. I felt awkward seeing my neighbor since I think he knew I was feeding his cats, and he could see they had found a new home in our bushes.

My neighbor’s son is my son’s best friend, and it felt strange whenever he came over to our house and he’d see his cats lounging in our bushes.

I didn’t want him to find out I was feeding his cats. Maybe, that was guilt. But sometimes he would come over right when I was feeding the cats — and he could see the cats eating from food dishes.

The main reason I felt guilty is the cats were probably one of few things that most reminded him of his mom, and now I’d stolen their affection from him.

But he didn’t seem upset seeing the cat dishes in front of our door, and neither he nor the cats seemed to have a connection with each other.

Lockdown companions

The cats became our fur friends during lockdown periods in the pandemic. Every day when I finished teaching my online classes at noon, I walked outside and saw Scotty and Clover lying in our garden next to each other.

My wife has never been a cat person, but. I’d had two cats growing up, and it’d been 20 years since I had one — and Scotty and Clover brought back my love of cats during the long pandemic.

Scotty had a habit of scratching my ankles in the mornings, and when my wife saw a cut on my ankle, she told me, “Don’t feed that cat.”

But, of course, I kept feeding the cat, and son became a cat person, playing with the cats with the cat toy with string dangling from a stick.

My wife began to interact with the cats over time, and when Scotty didn’t show up for breakfast one morning, she organized our family into a search and rescue team to look for him, asking neighbors if they had seen Scotty.

A woman found Scotty in a neighbor’s bushes. She told my wife, and as soon as I saw him, I could tell something was wrong because he wouldn’t come out.

I told another neighbor who also fed Scotty, it turns out an hour before I did every morning and she took him to the vet to see if something was wrong with him after we talked the cat’s owner to get his permission, of course.

Scotty had internal injuries, most likely the vet said from being hit by a car, and had to be put down. My wife, son, and I deeply felt the loss as if he were our cat and he was from all of us all feeding and giving him love every day.

My wife created a RIP sign with a picture of Scotty and taped it to our window to let neighbors know Scotty had passed away since he was a presence on our street and known to most people.

Clover missed her brother

Clover was Scotty’s brother. She started meowing incessantly outside our front door after Scotty died, and my wife’s heart melted (and mine too) for how she was grieving a loss.

I missed Scotty a lot too. He liked to hop on the hood of my car while I was writing. I rolled down the window, and he’d come inside. He was an Alpha male cat who could be gruff, but I liked that he let me give him hugs.

My wife … the non-Cat person … started to let Clover come inside our home in the mornings and evenings, and she liked kneading and snuggling on me.

But, unfortunately, we started getting flea bites, so Clover was an outdoor cat again — though her favorite place to sleep is on our back patio.

Clover likes to go for walks with my son and I at the park at night. Most of the time she meows at our door to let us know if we forgot to feed her or she’s ready to go for a night walk — or we check on her during the day.

She walks with us around the park and sits on my lap on a bench, and my son loves to video her hissing at the dogs walking by us. She acts like she is our cat, even if she lives outside and technically is a stray.

And, of course, we consider her our cat. I can yell out her name at the park if she isn’t with us, and she will come to find us.

Thanks for reading my story.

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