Imagine living in a neighborhood where there’s an outdoor cat that is pretty much adopted by the entire neighborhood. He doesn’t have an official owner, but you’ve taken it upon yourself to take him to the vet on a regular basis.

What would you do if a new neighbor moved in and claimed the cat as his own? Would you let the man keep the cat or fight for the cat’s freedom?

In this story, one person is in this exact situation, and she went from trying to be nice to the neighbor to feeling pretty alarmed.

Let’s read all about it.

Neighbor threatened to keep neighborhood cat forever, before surgery date. AITA for keeping him at my house for surgery?

So we have a neighborhood cat… spiritually, he belongs to nobody. However, my house is the one who takes him to the vet (vaccines, etc), feeds him, and is just a central hub for him.

When we moved in 4 years ago, we found him happily living outside on the streets. He loves it outside.

When we moved to this neighborhood he lived outside and he has a whole routine, with interspecies relationships, cat clans, human friends, etc.

He visits multiple people’s houses, enjoying lots of people’s company. Sometimes he stays at one neighbor’s house for a few days, but we usually comes back to our place and sleeps on our porch or in someone’s carport.

Now, the cat has a new favorite home.

That being said, we have a new neighbor who moved down the road. They have a cat of their own who lives inside and outside, and the neighborhood cat gets along very well with them.

However, we’ve been noticing that the neighborhood cat has been spending less than less time with everyone else, cooped up inside these people’s house.

He has surgery tomorrow, and he has been missing for days at a time.

This problematic neighbor knows that he has surgery, and we had originally planned for the neighborhood cat to stay with them, because he seemed to have liked being there so much. I wanted to include them and help them feel part of this help. They seemed to really love them.

The neighbor is waving red flags.

But upon getting to know them, this neighbor has been flaky, and vague with plans.

This problematic neighbor asks to see him. I oblige and bring him in a crate to let him visit before his big surgery day.

The neighbor sits me down in his porch, opens the crate after I tell him not to, and frees him out into the wild to prove a point that he Would come back because the cat is now his.

This neighbor threatened me by saying “I hope you know this cat is mine now and he won’t be anyone else’s” and said that the cat is never going to leave his home, and that this cat is not going to be his forever, and we can expect to see less of the cat.

She was trying to be a good neighbor by involving this neighbor.

I found this extremely alarming, and frankly rude.

The only reason I involve this guy is because I was under the impression that he was being helpful and supportive, and wanted to play a role in caretaking.

He made a few more remarks about how I’m being over emotional and tried to intimidate me.

I don’t know what ground I stand on or what sort of legal stands I have.

She’s not sure what to do about this wild card neighbor.

In my opinion, the cat belongs to everyone, he has tons of relationships with different cats and people and everyone loves him.

This one problematic neighbor who just moved into the neighborhood now wants to cause a problem.

Am I the problem? What do I do?

Yikes! The cat is not the neighbor’s cat. She needs to get that cat back ASAP and stop bringing him over to the neighbor’s house.

Let’s see if Reddit has some more advice.

This person thinks the cat is OP’s cat.

Another person recommends keeping the cat inside.

Whoever pays the vet bill owns the cat.

Another person suggests asking the vet for advice.

If OP doesn’t want the new neighbor to keep the cat, she needs to make the first move.

The cat’s days of roaming freely might be over.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.