“It’s a sad case,” says the Halls’ barrister, Tom Weisselberg QC. “If she’d seen sense, everyone’s time and money would have been saved.” He worked pro bono on the case, because the Halls are friends. There are few legal options for someone wanting to stop their neighbour stealing their cat. Technically, it’s theft, but generally the police won’t get involved. “You have to show that they intend to deprive you permanently of possession,” Weisselberg says. “That’s a high threshold to satisfy.” When he was a junior barrister, Weisselberg worked on a legal dispute between Kuwait Airways and Iraqi Airways. The Kuwaitis argued, successfully, that the Iraqis had in effect stolen some Kuwaiti planes, because they had painted their own colours on them, thereby converting them. “I said: ‘Look, if the Kuwaitis can say the Iraqis converted their aircraft by putting different colours on the planes, why can’t you say the defendant has converted your cat by changing its collar?’” Weisselberg planned to use this precedent in court but, at the courthouse door, Lesbirel agreed to a number of restrictions on contact with Ozzy.READ ALSO:
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Ozzy isn’t the only cat tearing communities asunder. “We thought it would be our forever home,” sighs Lana, 49, a company director from London. In 2017, Lana, her husband, their children and their three cats moved to rural Scotland. It was a stretch to take on the mortgage, but it was the home they had always dreamed of and the neighbours were welcoming – at first. In October, however, the shooting season started. “A neighbour said: ‘I’d keep your cats in. We know the groundskeeper has shot 12 cats to stop them taking the game birds.” Lana and her husband were appalled, but thought that, if they reasoned with the local landowner, he would have his gamekeeper leave the cats alone. They were wrong. “He said: ‘It’s my land, I’ll do what the hell I like. Who do you think you are? You’re not even from round here!’” Once-friendly neighbours took his side. “We were shunned. He had a lot of influence in the community.”No night vision goggles needed! Dogs’ eyes contain a special membrane, called the tapetum lucidum, which allows them to see in the dark.
For a while, Francis and Moustachio mostly stayed indoors. Francis was avoiding her neighbour and Moustachio was fearful of Little Big Balls. But now Francis is venturing outdoors again. “I can’t be held hostage by a cat,” she says. “But there’s still a flutter of discomfort when I’m out in the garden.” When Francis tries to shoo Little Big Balls away now, he doesn’t even move. “He doesn’t care. He knows I’m not a threat to him.” “He’s so naughty!” says Gina Burnside, a 33-year-old payroll processor from Darlington, of her shorthair rescue cat, Hector. Naughty might be an understatement: Hector is one of the reasons Burnside moved house, after her relationship with the elderly couple who lived next door became unbearably tense. Why? Because Hector is about as expansionist as Napoleon, only more merciless. First there were the frogs. “They had a frog pond until Hector moved in,” Burnside groans. “He caught every single one.”
Burnside apologised, but the couple were clearly annoyed. Dumping Hector back over the fence, they would make passive-aggressive remarks. “They’d say: ‘Here he is – again,’” Burnside says. “But I could tell it wasn’t a joke.” Things became so fraught that Burnside would watch their movements out of the window, so that she didn’t put the bins out at the same time. Then came Hector’s most aggressive move yet. “My husband came in one day and said: ‘Hector’s eating the chicken you left out for dinner. I said: ‘We’re not having chicken.’” Hector had stolen it from their table. “We tried to take it off him, but there was nothing we could do! He was tearing all over the garden with it.’” Burnside couldn’t face the confrontation, so she did the sensible thing and sold the house. The neighbours didn’t come to say goodbye. What’s going on in a cat’s brain when it maraudes into a neighbour’s garden? “It could be hungry,” muses Sheila Hamilton Andrews, a cat behaviour expert. “It could be cold. It could just feel like a bit of attention.” I ask Andrews whether cats love their owners . “Ha!” she says cheerily. “They become attached. You can interpret that as you will.” Mike just avoids his neighbours. The 52-year-old from London says he worries that, if he sees them, “I’m going to lose my temper again”. It all started when his cat, Bob, started disappearing for long stretches of time. He put up posters and posted notes through people’s doors. Eventually, his neighbours called – Bob was living in their house, gaining access through a garden window. Mike went around. Could they please keep the window closed, so Bob would stop getting in? They refused. Mike lost it. “They were completely incapable of seeing how upsetting it was,” he says. Bob continues to spend all his time at the neighbours, but returns to Mike to be fed. He doesn’t know if they feed him. Mike offered the neighbours ownership of Bob, but changed his mind when they refused to put in a cat flap and went on holiday for a week, leaving Bob in their garden. The situation is at an all-time low: he has considered suing them, but worries the legal bills would be too expensive. “It’s my cat,” he says. “It’s so frustrating.”INTERESTING FACT ABOUT YOUR PET: The United States has the highest pet dog population in the world. Approximately 75.8 million in fact.
Mike’s experience is not unique. “In the last three years, we’ve dealt with more incidents of cat theft than ever before,” says the pet detective Colin Butcher. His outfit, The Pet Detectives, specialises in returning cats to their owners. Butcher differentiates between “cat seduction” – which is when neighbours allow the cat into their home and feed it, but ultimately let it go – and outright theft. “The vast majority of cat-seduction cases will become theft if individuals are not stopped,” Butcher warns. How can you tell if someone is interfering with your feline friend? He suggests that if your cat is gaining weight, returning home smelling unusual or is newly groomed, these are signs someone else has their eye on your pet. A lot of people don’t realise they are stealing someone else’s cat: they think they are taking in a stray. (There are few genuine strays.) But some are shameless. “I’ve had cases where we’ve filmed people chucking a cat into the back of a removal van and moving down the road,” Butcher says. “We stop them and they say: ‘Oh, we have no idea how the cat got in!’ But there are cat bowls and litter trays in there, so you know they planned the theft.”READ ALSO:
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Butcher, a retired police detective inspector, uses the skills he learned in 15 years on the force to cajole neighbours into returning the cats. “I can be very persuasive,” he says. He carries a letter around with him from Surrey police’s chief constable, confirming that cat snatching is a crime. “I show them the letter and say: ‘You need to be sensible, now.’”basic puppy socialization
Most cases end amicably: shamefaced neighbours return the cat, everyone moves on. But there are a few cases that haunt him. These involve so-called collectors: serial predators who trawl the streets, looking for cats to steal. “There’s a crazy cat lady on every street,” Butcher says seriously. “They are always women.” The worst case he ever worked on involved a collector who had lured 16 cats from their owners and locked them in her attic.
Carolyn Sherlock’s cat Tigger was stolen by a collector. The 54-year-old local government worker’s former neighbour had a play shed for cats in her garden; she would feed them roast lamb. When Tigger disappeared, Sherlock did not suspect one of her neighbours could have taken him. But, one day, Sherlock went around to her neighbour’s on an unrelated matter and was stunned to find Tigger on a rug in front of the fire. “She said: ‘He’s been living here for a while. He likes the underfloor heating in our conservatory.’”
It is easy to pin neighbourhood strife on cats. Cunning little things; the tyrants of our homes. But what if cats aren’t the enemy within – what if we humans are to blame? We take what is not ours; we covet thy neighbour’s cat. Really, it is not the cat’s fault. They are just doing what is natural. Butcher tells me that about 50% of cats have a second home they frequent regularly. He has heard of four people believing they own the same cat. Cats are sensitive to changes in their home environment: new babies, flooring or pets may prompt them to relocate.
Help Them Adapt to New Environments. “The only thing that likes change is a four-week-old baby in a wet diaper.” Though puppies and kittens are easygoing, mature pets often need guidance transitioning into new spaces. Dr. Becker advises introducing them slowly. “Don’t just dump them in a new house and hope for the best.” Pheromone sprays are handy for making strange houses more inviting. “Cats,” notes Dr. Becker, exist as both predator and prey, and in predator mode, they need vertical surfaces like climbing towers to feel safe.”
It is a disobliging truth: cats do not obey humans. Their capriciousness is legendary, their cynicism ancient. There is probably a cave painting of a cat skulking away from its owner in search of a warmer fire. “You cannot reduce a cat to a possession, because it will not allow it to happen,” says Butcher. “It’s too wilful.”
You can never really own a cat, only rent its affections for a while. One day, it will slink out of the door: a heartless courtesan, in search of a better prospect.
Some names have been changed