Chances are, if you’ve lived in any sort of community, you’ve probably seen a stray cat or two. Maybe you’ve even heard someone say, if you feed a stray, it will keep coming back.

In this story, that maxim was certainly true. Except this cat made a big enemy: the local HOA.

Let’s see who let this cat outta the bag.

My HOA’s battle with the community cat

Last year a cat started talking to mine through a window.

I thought this was cute that they decided to be friends, but when I opened the door, the stray cat ran off.

I assumed I would never see him again since no cats survive very long outside where I live.

We have coyotes, hawks, and owls which have all lead to me never seeing the same cat more than once in the eleven years I’ve lived here.

But this cat was a survivor.

This cat, who we’ve since named Blue, is just different.

He kept coming by to visit every day for a month. Eventually, he walked inside the house.

My wife caught him and took him to the Humane Society assuming they would put him up for adoption.

Instead they told us about their community cat program. They spayed and vaccinated him, clipped his ear, and told us to return him where we found him.

But that wasn’t the last they saw of him.

We released him and assumed after kidnapping him and chopping off his privates that he’d never want to have anything to do with us again.

Instead, he kept coming by.

He would come inside, snuggle our dogs and cat and sleep with them all day, then go out at night and do whatever he wanted.

Then we’d be walking the dogs around the neighborhood, and he would start following us which everyone who saw thought was hilarious.

Well, not everyone thought it was hilarious.

Everyone except my HOA that is.

They got mad, claimed the cat was mine, and told me that I couldn’t let him out unsupervised.

We started keeping him inside and just taking him on walks with the dogs to get his wiggles out because when he didn’t get outside time, he would start destroying everything in the house.

This was working pretty well, but he kept eating any low lying bird families, and this upset a couple of the neighbors who again complained to the HOA.

There was a new rule.

So then the board proposed a change to the neighborhood rules that would require all pets to be leashed, not just dogs.

A lot of people wrote in saying this was idiotic, joking about leashing their turtles and guinea pigs, etc. Nevertheless, the board passed the new rule.

When I read it, I realized it didn’t say anything about the length of the leash or that it needed to be held. So we got him a ridiculously short leash that he now just drags along behind him.

I also contacted the Humane Society and told them how ridiculous my HOA has been, and they are going to send their social media team over to make some videos of the cat for their channels.

A cat on a leash is an unusual sight.

What do the comments on Reddit have to say about this story?

This person says, have you considered a barn?

Someone else says this plan is for the birds.

Another person agrees, this is a bird brained idea.

Another poster says, be careful what you leash for.

Another person says, curiosity killed this neighborhood.

Dealing with an HOA can be like herding cats.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.