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Neighborhood rules can get ridiculous fast when one determined HOA decides even a wandering community cat needs stricter supervision.

One family tries keeping Blue indoors, but when the board requires every pet to wear a leash, would you fight the rule or follow it literally?

Cue a hilariously tiny leash that technically satisfies the policy while letting Blue continue his neighborhood adventures.

See how one cat turned an HOA crackdown into a very public comedy routine.

My HOA’s battle with the community cat

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

I thought it 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 led to me never seeing the same cat more than once in the eleven years I’ve lived here.

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

Trying to help the cat, they took him to the Humane Society.

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 fixed and vaccinated him, clipped his ear, and told us to return him where we found him.

We released him and assumed, after kidnapping him and fixing him, 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.

The neighbors were amused, but the HOA… not so much.

Then we’d be walking the dogs around the neighborhood, and he would start following us, which everyone who saw thought 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, which angered some neighbors, who again complained to the HOA.

Eventually, the board passed a new rule.

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

Many 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.

Wow! These people are dedicated to protecting that cat!

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Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit think about what happened.

This person thinks the kind thing to do is to take care of Blue.

Yet another reader who feels the same way.

For this reader, it’s about wild cats being a threat to birds.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about annoying neighbors who end up regretting their request for a property survey.

It seems this person was very amused by the story.

The HOA kept escalating restrictions until every pet had to be leashed, regardless of whether that rule made much sense.

Blue’s family complied with a ridiculously short leash he could simply drag around behind him.

Then the Humane Society got involved, planning social media videos that could make the HOA’s cat battle even more visible.

The board wanted Blue under control, but instead gave him a tiny leash plus a nice lil publicity campaign.

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Author

Chris Allen