Just want to get this off my chest.
LunaXPusheen - Even though I know you'll read this even without me tagging you.
KiraReno - Because I just want to keep you updated on his situation.
So, it started around the 4-5 months, I think. We started noticing a certain orange tabby cat that was walking outside of our apartment complex. At first he was a little shy, but then he started getting used to us and walking up to us when we opened the garage. Because a neighbour told us that the cat had been locked in his garage for a week, we started training Ace (We hadn't named him Ace yet at this time) to stay outside of our garage with treats because we didn't want a similar thing to happen with ours.
After a while we noticed that he would come up to us early in the mornings, completely hungry, so we changed the treats for cat food. He gladly ate it, and liked to be petted too. At this time it was our 6 weeks long Summer break. We'd spend hours just sitting with him and petting him, whilst he was allowed to explore our garage a bit too. One afternoon it was raining, and the poor cat was drenched with water. Bris (My brother) took him into the garage and dried him off. Ace looked a lot happier afterwards, but didn't look like he wanted to leave the garage and go back into the rain. We sat with him until it stopped raining, and I asked Bris if he had a name in mind for the orange kitty. He said he didn't, and I suggested Ace because he reminded me of Portgas D. Ace. (for those of you reading that don't know One Piece, 'cause I know you're there, Ace is the brother of the main character and can control flames, plus he wears an orange hat) Bris thought this was a pretty fitting name.
Because we're going to move in February, we had to clean up the garage anyways, and Ace loved laying in the sun in front of it. We would just be busy there for hours, and every time Ace would be there. We started feeding him more, as we noticed that he would fight with another outdoors cat because there wasn't enough food.
Around a month ago it came as far as that we fed him 3 meals a day. We had seen a woman and/or her two children take Ace in overnight, and assumed that they were his owners. One afternoon (around 2-3 weeks ago) I got into a conversation with her, and she told me that they didn't own Ace. They had gotten into contact with his owner, and they said that they knew their cat was walking around there, but they moved. So they just left Ace to wander around outside for an entire year. And the other people that would take him in overnight were going to move to another part of the city I live in in a month time. They wanted to take Ace, or 'Tiger', as they call him, with them, because they really love him. The problem is that he doesn't use a litter box, is what she told me. I told her that we might want to take him in too, but I had to discuss this with my mother, as we also have another cat. I told my mom about this, and she also had a few questions she wanted to ask that woman.
Monday the 23rd of September, 2.5 weeks ago, we spoke with that woman again. She told us that she was going to take 'Tiger' with her when they moved. Her reason why? It's laughable, really. Because he spent the most time with them. I mean, yeah, of course he spends the most time with you if you take him in around 1/2 pm and don't let him go out for the rest of the day/night. And every morning he would come to us, starving. I'm afraid they didn't feed him.
And another stupid part, they were going to instantly let him go outside after they moved, because it's an outdoor cat. Our problem with that? If you let a cat go outside without him or her get used to their new territory (their new house) first, of course they won't know where to go to spend the night. Big chance that Ace would try to find his way back to the place he knows as his territory. The worst part of that is that there are multiple very busy roads in between, and even train tracks. Poor Ace would get run over by either a train or a car. Our other cat's half-brother was an outdoors cat too, he died because he got hit by a train. I think he was at most 2-3 years old. No way in hell I'll let that happen to another cat.
