My neighbor recently stole my cat! This is my 14 year old sisters cat, our dad gave her this cat before he passed away two months ago. It is her last connection to my dad and is greatly attached to this cat. The neighbors say that they gave the cat away to a family with children and they will not give it back. They claim to have had the cat for two weeks which is impossible because my cat was here at my house on Monday, 4 days ago! I have wittnesses who saw my cat in my house! This is obsurd! They thought the cat was abandoned and neglected, he had a collar, tag, and is very healthy looking he is well fed and well kept. I have contacted the police they came to my house to talk to me and my fiancé, they said there is nothing they can do that they cannot make her give us our cat back!! That is ridiculous, people cannot steal an animal and get away with it right? Please tell me something anything I can do to try to get this cat back, my sister is heart broken and has dealt with enough loss for 14 years old.

>Moved from Zoology<

[QUOTE=katerinehart]my neighbor recently stole my cat! This is my 14 year old sisters cat, our dad gave her this cat before he passed away two months ago. It is her last connection to my dad and is greatly attached to this cat. The neighbors say that they gave the cat away to a family with children and they will not give it back. They claim to have had the cat for two weeks which is impossible because my cat was here at my house on Monday, 4 days ago! I have wittnesses who saw my cat in my house! This is obsurd! They thought the cat was abandoned and neglected, he had a collar, tag, and is very healthy looking he is well fed and well kept. I have contacted the police they came to my house to talk to me and my fiancé, they said there is nothing they can do that they cannot make her give us our cat back!! That is ridiculous, people cannot steal an animal and get away with it right? Please tell me something anything I can do to try to get this cat back, my sister is heart broken and has dealt with enough loss for 14 years old.

>Moved from Zoology



If the Police won't help you you don't have a lot of options - you could try Small Claims Court for the dollar value of the cat (which will be negligible because animals are proeprty, like chairs) but perhaps the general upset of having going to Court will shake something loose here.

How did the get the cat, how long was it "missing" before you heard this, how did you hear they had it and gave it away - and do you have proof it's the same cat - ?

Sorry to answer a question with a question but need more info -

A lot of people do abandon cats, unfortunately, so if she saw a cat hanging around her place a lot, and it had slipped its collar, she isn't entirely out of line for thinking that its been abandoned. This is one of the risks that you run if you have a free-roaming outside cat.

Here's the difficulty in your situation: You neighbor gave a stray cat to another family. She doesn't have the cat in her possession. Can you prove that the cat that she gave away was your cat, and not some other cat? It's possible that she did in fact have a stray for a couple weeks and found it a new home, and your cat is still somewhere in your neighborhood. And even if she did give your cat away, if she can prove that she had had it for two weeks, and that there was nothing to inform her that it was your cat, and that she had good cause to think that the cat was a stray, it would be hard to convict her of "stealing" the cat, since she acted in good faith.

As Judy said, you can try getting money in small claims court, but I think that you will lose unless you have some proof that the cat she gave away was actually your cat, and not just one that looked like it.

My neighbor recently stole my cat! This is my 14 year old sisters cat, our dad gave her this cat before he passed away two months ago. It is her last connection to my dad and is greatly attached to this cat. The neighbors say that they gave the cat away to a family with children and they will not give it back. They claim to have had the cat for two weeks which is impossible because my cat was here at my house on Monday, 4 days ago! I have wittnesses who saw my cat in my house! This is obsurd! They thought the cat was abandoned and neglected, he had a collar, tag with his name and number, and is very healthy looking he is well fed and well kept. She left one voicemail on my dads cel phone that I check periodically, she didn't put up "found cat" signs and he was never missing from my house, she was feeding him so he was going back and forth between our houses, everyone knows if you feed an animal they will continue to come back! She should have left him alone. One of our neighbors told us that their dog chased the cat up a tree and they had to get a ladder to get him down out of the tree, they failed to mention that to us of course. The whole thing just doesn't add up. The husband said they had him for 6 days where as the wife said they had him for 2 1/2 weeks. They have hung up on my sister, my fiancé, and myself and are not cooperating or polite. I have contacted the police they came to my house to talk to me and my fiancé, they said there is nothing they can do that they cannot make her give us our cat back!! That is ridiculous, people cannot steal an animal and get away with it right? Please tell me something anything I can do to try to get this cat back, my sister is heart broken and has dealt with enough loss for 14 years old. They are moving out of our neighborhood today, convientently. Please help me! There has to be a way.

sue them in small claims court for the value of the cat.

go to criminal court clerk, see if your state allows you to press charges personally against someone ( at least requires a hearing to see if there is cause) *** this is not allowed in all states, you can do this in GA

Asking the same question again is not going to get you any better answers. You will have a hard time proving that the cat was "stolen" and not just innocently rehomed. Especially is this is the same cat as the one with the eyes that wouldn't open that you posted about in the Cats post. That might lead someone to think that the cat wasn't being cared for, and thus had been abandoned. And it's especially difficult since you claim there is now a third party involved, who got the cat without knowing any of this drama, and who is most likely not going to just hand the cat over to you.

Also, the fact that their dog chased your cat up a tree doesn't matter. Quite honestly, if the cat is in their yard and their dog kills it, there's nothing you can do about it. The dog's not breaking any laws, as long as it stays in its yard. These are the risks you run by allowing the cat to roam.

Didn't I already answer this once - at length.

I guess you didn't like my answer - ?

I don't think that there is anything you can do about this cat napping. If the cat was outside your home, it's fair game to anyone who wants to catnap it. The police won't do anything about it. You can go to Small Claims Court, but if you don't have a photograph of the cat with a family member in the photo, you're out of luck on getting any money out of the catnapper. And if you don't have any witnesses who saw the cat napped, or you saw the catnapper do this crime, you're not going to win. Sorry about the cat being a gift from your dad, but unfortunately it didn't have big neon signs on it stating such and the catnapper took your cat. You can't leave any animal outside unattended to without any sort of risk involved with losing it. Look at all the cattle rustling that is still going on now a days. Look at all the horses that are stolen right out of their pastures. You can do virtually nothing about this.

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