When Amy’s cat, Sid*, first started spending more time away from home, Amy* put it down to wanderlust. A former street cat, Sid had landed on his feet in her leafy London suburb, but still retained his free-roaming sociability. When Sid began disappearing for up to days at a time though, Amy worried. She put a tracker on his collar to find out where he was going. She didn’t expect to discover him a few doors up the road.
Sid is roaming – but most of the time, for entire afternoons and even sometimes overnight, he is with Amy’s neighbour. “He is in her house, constantly, all the time,” she says. This is not a coincidence. Sid might not be getting six dinners, like his famous namesake in Inga Moore ’s 1990 children’s book, but the neighbour is certainly spoiling him, as she recently let slip to Amy’s partner. “She’s feeding him organic chicken!” Amy says indignantly.
Amy does not blame Sid for being disloyal. “Cats are cats – they have no concept of human boundaries.” But her neighbour, she says, is overstepping by rewarding Sid’s visits despite frequent – and increasingly firm – requests to stop. “She’s literally enticing him away.”
Two years ago her cat Scooby started coming home reeking of marijuana, well-nourished ‘but quite deranged’
Cats have long been a source of neighbourly tensions, often stemming from their unwelcome flowerbed deposits or penchant for birdlife. These days, however, conflicts are just as likely to break out over their care and ownership. According to the steady stream of posts to local networking app Nextdoor and neighbourhood Facebook groups, people across the UK are feeding cats that don’t belong to them, accommodating them in their homes and allegedly making active efforts to lure them away from loving owners.
The line might seem obvious: if you don’t pay the vet bills, it’s not your pet. Since the introduction of the Pet Abduction Act in 2024, there could even be a legal case. But the rise of “rogue feeders” and cat seducers might not be as cut-and-dried as it seems, driven by broader changes in our relationships with pets and other people – and complicated, of course, by cats’ utter ungovernability.
Amy and her partner have tried many tactics to stop their neighbour from indulging Sid, from buying him a collar that instructs strangers not to feed him, to telling her a white lie that he is permanently on medication. But: “She just does not listen. It’s outrageous.”
Sid’s second home makes it harder to give him medication when he really does need it, and otherwise care for him, says Amy. More than that, she misses his company. “It really upsets me: he is our cat, and we never, ever see him.” When the neighbour went away on holiday, Sid returned home. “It was like having a pet again – it was so nice.” The neighbour, meanwhile, has said she can’t get a cat of her own because she goes away too much.
This points to a broader shift in our relationship with pets. According to Cats Protection’s 2025 report , growth in ownership has been among younger, more affluent people, many of whom keep their cats indoors or restrict their access, via enclosed “catios”, for instance. That shift, along with collars being supplanted by microchips (legally required for cats since 2024), may be leading people to mistake much-loved pets for strays. Meanwhile, the number of stray cats is widely reported to have risen in recent years ; this is attributed to more people abandoning their pets due to rising costs, or failing to neuter them, leading to unwanted kittens. The Cats Protection report found that about 13% of the total UK cat population had been taken in from the street or somehow “acquired”, rather than bought or adopted from a UK agency.
But the same financial pressures are also making people think twice before getting pets of their own. Cats Protection found more than 1.5m households wanted a cat but did not have one, with expense and unsuitable housing the key barriers. With cat ownership estimated to cost about £1,000 a year, increasingly it seems people are opting to borrow someone else’s.
When Alison Ward first moved to her central Norwich townhouse 18 years ago, she assumed the biggest threat to her four cats would be the busy roads. Instead, it has been people intent on “adopting them”, Ward says. “It’s gone off the scale. There’s not a week that goes by now without discovering that someone’s feeding one of them, or showing unnatural interest.”
Mostly people are well-intentioned, at best “overeager”, says Ward. Her quartet of former street cats all roam, but are clearly cared for. They are now also Facebook famous from Ward’s regular posts, reminding people not to feed them or responding to concerned inquiries from “do-gooders”, she says. “People see a cat outside and assume it must be a stray. I have to check the group every day and say: ‘No, they’re owned!’”
Concerned residents routinely give her cats unsuitable food (including once, memorably, steak) and take them to the local vet. The last time, Ward had to rush to collect her cat Monty lest she be charged for leaving him there overnight. Monty was in rude health – apart from an upset stomach caused by the journey. “Apparently, he’d vomited a load of fresh salmon that they’d fed him in the boot of the car.”
More troubling is the trend of people taking Ward’s pets into their homes. Last year Monty would often disappear for days, returning distressed but “really well-fed – and actually groomed”, she says. Two years ago her other cat, Scooby, started coming home reeking of marijuana, again well-nourished “but quite deranged”. Ward tracked him to a house occupied by men in their 20s: “They said they thought he was their cat.” They’d bought Scooby a basket, bowls, food and given him a fluorescent orange collar. (Her cats frequently come home with their collars removed.)
Such incidents used to be rare, and typically involved stereotypical “cat hoarders”, says Ward. Post-pandemic, cat seducers cut across all demographic categories. An unexpected number are men. “A lot seem to be single. I think they’re lonely, so they just go and ‘adopt’ a cat.” Many, she suspects, are renters, whose leases don’t allow them to have cats of their own. “It’s very easy to dip in and out of someone else’s pet: you haven’t got the responsibility, or the vet bills.”
Ward has no issue with people enjoying her cats’ company, she says, but some interactions are hard to justify as well-intentioned or naive. Last summer, Ward told off a middle-aged man for persistently feeding Monty Twiglets in the park by her house. “He just said: ‘He enjoys them, he’s outdoors, you can’t stop me!’ I said, ‘Well, let’s hope he has diarrhoea on you.’” Earlier last year, Ward looked out of her bedroom window one night and saw a woman with two children, trying to coax Scooby into their car. “She said: ‘We’re just being friendly!’”
When Ward’s four cats pass on, she plans to keep future pets indoors, which likely means she won’t get another older rescue cat. “It’s a bit against my ethos, but I can’t keep going through this.” For now, she has bought more custom-printed collars and keeps posting to Facebook. “We can’t do anything about it – trying to shame people is difficult if they know no shame.”
The rise of rogue feeders is partly a technology-driven issue. Community Facebook groups and low-cost trackers have granted greater oversight of pets’ business – and with it the illusion of control. But someone else feeding your cat is more than just a nuisance: the stakes can be as great as losing the pet entirely.
After moving house, Emily* noticed one of her cats gaining weight and staying out all night. When she tracked him to a neighbour’s, she asked them to stop feeding him: “They just ignored us.” Later, the cat was fatally struck by a car outside the neighbour’s house. “I’m sure this was because he would go wandering down the road for extra food. It was devastating.”
Even if the cat seems content with its second home, the conflict over its care can be distressing for the owner. For the past year, Pauline* has been struggling with her neighbour’s persistent transgressions with her cat, Luka*. It began with texted pictures and updates about Luka’s visits. Pauline was initially encouraging – “trying to be neighbourly”, she says. But, over months, the neighbour’s fondness for Luka began to look suspiciously like efforts to coax her away – such as buying her a bed. “I was told she was being fed fresh salmon, and paté. It got to the point where I wasn’t seeing her.”
When Luka was absent for an unprecedented six weeks, Pauline became more upset. “I was going through sleepless nights, constantly thinking about it. I even mentioned it at work – it was really affecting me. My little companion was missing.” Adding to her distress was the “sense of injustice”, she adds. “I was consumed with anger.”
She tried “the negotiation route”, explaining cat behaviour and the importance of consistency, and politely asking her neighbour to stop encouraging Luka, but the woman persisted. “She said: ‘I’m not going to stop her from coming in if she wants to.’” Their interactions, conducted mostly over text, became increasingly fraught. Eventually the neighbour questioned Pauline’s care of Luka and suggested the cat had “chosen” a new owner. “She actually said that she wanted to keep her,” Pauline says, still disbelieving. “I was sobbing on the sofa, thinking: ‘Oh God, how am I going to pull this back?’” It took her days to compose a reply. She says the neighbour responded by accusing Pauline of harassment, “because just twice, in nine months, I’d asked her if she had Luka there – if ”.
Luka is lying on Pauline’s chest as she speaks, clearly content. Pauline has had her since she was a kitten – long before the neighbour moved to the area. Luka is sociable, and periodically “adopts” new owners, but it has never been a lasting issue, Pauline says. “When I notice her not coming home, I post on Facebook: ‘Please don’t feed her’ – because, obviously, that’s behavioural reinforcement – and she does eventually then come back.”
Having failed to change her neighbour’s behaviour, Pauline tried to divert her cat. She took steps to improve Luka’s home environment and routine, installed humane deterrents along her route to the neighbour’s, and kept her inside for four weeks in the hopes of resetting her territory. She also put a tracker on Luka’s collar, and set a motion-activated camera next to the window by which she comes and goes. In a desperate moment, she even reported the dispute to the police online, though she had no response. “I just thought I need to perhaps start logging the issue.”
Pauline considered exploring the new law against pet abduction (“Honestly, it felt like that at the time”) but she did not want to risk further inflaming the situation. She also wondered whether it would apply: Luka was getting into her neighbour’s house through open windows. “I didn’t want to cause a neighbourly dispute – but I also wanted my cat back.”
The Pet Abduction Act came into force in England, Wales and Northern Ireland two years ago, replacing the 1968 Theft Act, which treated pets like any other stolen property. It carries a maximum penalty of up to five years’ imprisonment and/or a significant fine, in recognition of the emotional investment in pets as family members. (They are still treated like chattel in the context of divorce or separation.)
The cat-related offence is defined as someone taking “a cat so as to remove it from the lawful control of any person”. That could include “causing or inducing the cat” to go with them; but the person charged may also argue that they had “reasonable excuse”.
Between August 2024 and April 2026, the Crown Prosecution Service recorded 10 charged offences pertaining to dogs – and just one involving cats. Daniel Warren-Cummings, a central behaviour officer at Cats Protection, says the charity was advised by a legal expert that it was “nigh-on impossible” to draw the line, “bar somebody coming on to your property and stealing your cat”. The “messy grey area” is complicated by feline nature, he adds. They have a core territory, where they will most often eat and sleep, and a larger “home range” beyond that. That can stretch acres, but in built-up urban environments is more often curtailed.
Likewise, Warren-Cummings attributes the rise in rogue feeding to increasing population density and more pets: “I think it is going to become more of a contentious issue.” But owners aren’t necessarily blameless, he adds. Cats can be enticed away from home, but often something is also driving them to leave. “Is there a reason why that cat is being so easily seduced?”
Common explanations include the introduction of another pet or a baby, home renovations or tensions with another local feline. That’s not to blame owners for their wandering pets, Warren-Cummings adds, but often, they aren’t aware of environmental stressors, meaning efforts to keep their cats at home only worsen the problem. As for outside attractions, cats can be driven to seek out attention and play as much as a gourmet meal, he says. They might be dismissed as low-maintenance relative to dogs, “but if they’re left alone for long periods of time, boredom and frustration build up.”
Instead of finger-pointing, Warren-Cummings would like to see greater focus on the animal’s welfare, from owners and “feeders” alike. “Go into conversations knowing that everyone here wants what’s best for the cat, even if it happens to be your cat.” Developing that relationship, and being transparent about the cat’s care, can be enough to reassure an overinvested neighbour, he says. If they have ulterior motives, or “their own stuff going on”, it can be trickier.
Related: The pet I’ll never forget: Karl, the tabby who went to college and learned to use a toilet
Equally, owners can have unrealistic expectations of their pets, Warren-Cummings points out. “It’s sometimes a case of: ‘I have purchased you, therefore you must be in my home.’” If the cat is happy and healthy, he suggests, is it really a problem they have a home away from home? Anyone with genuine concerns about a cat’s welfare should contact their local rescue, rather than taking it into their own hands, he adds – but, as usual with these disputes, the path forward lies with “human behaviour change, not cat behaviour change”. And that, Warren-Cummings says, tends to be harder.
Lately, Pauline and her neighbour seem to have reached an uneasy truce, and Luka has been spending more time at home, suggesting the paté tap has been shut off. “It could potentially start up again, so I’ve just got to arm myself emotionally for that,” Pauline says. She admits that the experience has left her overly attuned to Luka’s comings and goings, and “far more hypervigilant than I really want to be”. As for the cat, now curled up behind the television, Pauline says, “she’s completely oblivious”.
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Sid is roaming – but most of the time, for entire afternoons and even sometimes overnight, he is with Amy’s neighbour. “He is in her house, constantly, all the time,” she says. This is not a coincidence. Sid might not be getting six dinners, like his famous namesake in Inga Moore ’s 1990 children’s book, but the neighbour is certainly spoiling him, as she recently let slip to Amy’s partner. “She’s feeding him organic chicken!” Amy says indignantly.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Elle Hunt. Published 5 Sept 2026, 04:00 am.
