Well, that's *one* way to get to know the neighbours ...

We have two cats.  Psycho Kitty has never had any interest in going outside, thank-you-very-much. Her indoor domain is quite enough for her!

Our other cat is quite young; we've had her just over a year now, and she was a kitten when she decided to come live in our home. When we first saw her- just after sunset one evening in August- we looked out our livingroom window to see a kitten standing on the windowsill, looking in at us!

Voyeuristic tendencies aside, she seemed a sweet little kitten, so we took her in, in an attempt to find out to whom she belonged ... We called the local vet offices, as well as the Humane Society, to see if anyone was looking for her. Also took her to our vet, to see if she had a microchip, or a tattoo we overlooked.

(this story, BTW, is practically identical to how we came to have The Hound of the Baskervilles™- at least this time, we saw it coming ...)

 

We waited a few weeks, in case her owners were on holidays. No one, however, ever claimed her, and she has been happily living with us ever since.

Or so we thought! We tried to keep her indoors, especially at first (our daughter was worried she wouldn't come home again, since she'd been an outdoor cat when she deigned to accept us). But she really likes her outside time, so we eventually started letting her out periodically.

Recently, she has taken to going out for longer and longer periods of time, and just last week, she didn't come home at all.  Since she goes outside, we have a little harness for her (works a little better than a collar), which has her rabies and ID tag on it (her name, and our phone number, no address).  She's very good at slipping out of her harness, and when she was gone overnight, she wasn't wearing it. When she *did* come home, we made sure to put her harness back on her, and tightened it up, just a little.

Last night, we had a voicemail message- it seemed our little adventurous believes in Free Love, and had been spending quite a bit of time hanging out with the guys next door. Since she finally had her harness on yesterday, they were able to call us and let us know about the sweet little visitor they'd had for the past few weeks ...

So now she has earned herself a nickname: Timeshare Kitty.