Have you ever had a pet find you? I’ve never gone to an animal shelter to adopt a cat. The cats have always found me. One was through a coworker who brought a kitten to work. Another was when a scared kitten literally ended up at my front door, and another was a stray cat who ended up living in my backyard because she was too scared to come in the house.

In this story, we hear about a cat who finds a family. The stray cat becomes friends with the family cat who is kept inside. They communicate through a window. The bond with the family grows from there until the stray cat is basically their pet.

The problem is that the neighbors think all pet cats should be kept inside, and the HOA thinks all pets should be on leashes when they’re outside.

Let’s read all about it.

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 the cat came back.

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.

The cat was almost like a pet.

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.

We released him and assumed after kidnapping him and chopping his balls off 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.

Now, he basically is their pet cat.

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.

The HOA board made a new rule.

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

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.

OP complied.

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.

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A cat on a leash. That’s pretty funny. Although, I can’t say I disagree with the neighbors who wish the cat would be kept inside instead of killing the birds.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

It is pretty crazy how much drama Blue caused.

This person points out a big problem with outdoor cats.

Another person disagrees with the animal shelter’s advice.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a college student who decides to send his university a counter-bill after they try to get him to pay “inconvenience fees.”

This person has barn cats.

Outdoor cats may not be the best idea, but it sounds like this family is mainly keeping Blue inside.

I can’t help but wonder if the name Blue comes from the name of the raptor in the Jurassic World movies.

Either way, it’s cool that cats sometimes find their own families.