An anonymous person has been absolutely berated by their neighbour after they admitted to having their cat neutered without asking.
The admission came in a Reddit post on the site’s Am I The A**hole community, where the person explained what they had done and how it led to their neighbour going “ballistic” at them.
In the post, the person explained that they run a trap–neuter–return scheme among local strays and were recently called to an area with a lot of strays.
They explained: “They were everywhere and I mostly ended up handing it over to professionals.
“I did, however, manage to grab three very sweet cats. Two were terrified, skinny, a little beaten up, but overall friendly. The third one was a little gent.”
The person explained that the third male cat had a collar, was tubby and well-groomed, indicating it had an owner.
Explaining that they had a choice between locating the cat’s owners and dropping him off, or taking him to get neutered, the poster revealed they did the latter.
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They wrote: “Ultimately I took him with me and got him neutered. No chip so I called the number on his tag and informed them where their cat was and gave them time slots to pick him up or have him dropped off.
“The owners went ballistic. They were cursing me out and came to collect their cat not twenty minutes later. Called me a kidnapper, blamed me for their child having nightmares (scared over their cat going missing).”
While the person attempted to defend themselves, arguing they “have a duty to care for stray cats”, they didn’t garner a lot of sympathy in the post’s comments.
One Redditor argued: “You did kidnap their cat and made a (superbly arrogant) decision to have him neutered without the owner's permission.
“You can judge them all you want for letting their cat outside, but the first thing to have done was to call the cat's people and asked ‘Hey, I found your cat. Did you know he was outside?’ That's the basic due diligence, right there.”
However, another Redditor also argued that while the original poster was in the wrong, the owners were also being irresponsible for letting their unneutered male cat out of the house.
They wrote: “Everyone sucks here. The owners for letting an intact pet outside unsupervised to breed, and you for having a surgical medical procedure done to an animal (that you KNEW had owners) without the owner’s consent.
“Regardless of the morality of allowing pets to contribute to the stray population (for which the owner is an a**hole), making medical decisions for someone else's pet makes you a massive a**hole.”
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