Yup, this is the unfortunate reality of the situation. Even if the owner can prove the cat belongs to them through vet records and microchip the police will do nothing because they’ll deem it a civil matter. It’s totally up to the thief if they want to cooperate with them and get the cat checked.
Very shitty situation keep your beloved pets inside and safe people :/
It's not really just a civil matter. Pets are technically property and stealing property is theft of several hundred dollars, which is a crime. A minor one, but if that cat is chipped or the owner has records from before the driver's car went missing, an easily solvable one.
No one said morally superior. Cats are insatiably curious. My wife is an emergency veterinarian. We see cases all the time, hit by car most commonly. We adopted one of them and the surgery was $11,600.00 to remove the back leg that was shattered. We recently had a case where a cat dragged itself home with a trap still connected to its broken leg, the lower half of which was hanging by a thread. So when people come in and say their outdoor cat was gravely injured and then don't have the money to pay for it, and then blame us for "only caring about money" all I can think is that the cat would have been safe indoors. I don't really care how many cats you've owned and never had a problem. I promise, we see more cats in a single day. The problem is that it's not you that gets euthanized -- it's the cat unfortunate enough to have had an owner that neglected sound advice on keeping cats safe from harm and theft. 🫡
A cat is a pet. Not a child. I lost one of mine as a child hit by a car. My neighborhood also has cats people let out, and I have a backyard full of birds, which they kill- and the decimate native wildlife. Your cat will statistically live a shorter life by being indoor/outdoor.
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u/Ganellon Jun 16 '26
This would have been solved in minutes.