After 2 years i'd let it go

Casadena

Dear Prudence,

Last year, I moved to a new city and state. The other night, I was scrolling through my neighborhood’s HOA Facebook group and saw a post from two years ago about someone looking for their missing cat. The photos immediately caught my eye—because the cat looks exactly like my neighbor’s, let’s call her “Sienna,” cat. I’ve pet-sat for Sienna before and have photos of the cat. I compared them side-by-side. They’re identical down to the markings.

Now I’m stuck. Should I bring this up with Sienna, whom I’ve become friends with? She said she found the cat in her yard, took it to the vet, and had it scanned for a chip, but nothing came back, so she then decided to keep it. She is not on the community’s Facebook group, so it’s very unlikely she knew a neighbor was looking for it. Or should I reach out to the neighbor who made the original post, even though it’s been two years? They do still live in the community, although I do not know them personally. What if this neighbor who posted ends up genuinely believing the cat is theirs? I don’t want to stir up drama, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Sienna has kids who are now attached to the cat so it’s sad to think about the cat having to be re-(re?)homed again. What’s the right thing to do?

—Caught in a Cat Conundrum

MyNameIsNot

My neighbors across the street have a cat that goes out sometimes. It didn't come home one night. They posted it on facebook, nextdoor and anywhere else you can think of. The husband drove around the neighborhood for hours calling the cat and shaking treats. They knocked on doors and stopped everyone who was out walking dogs. They made posters and put them up everywhere. Three days later, someone saw the cat in a tree and the teenaged daughter climbed up and rescued him. 

I'm going to say either 1) the people who lost the cat didn't really very hard to find it or 2) Sienna knows and just doesn't care. Either way, there's no good in dragging this up 2 years later. 

levioosa

Does this cat have some unique marking? A lot of cats look nearly identical. We used to think we had like 3 black cats that would hang out in our backyard (we’re the only neighborhood house without dogs). One time we looked out and there were seven. It looked like the matrix lol. We wondered how many times we mistook one cat for another one. In the end we could identify five out of the seven easily enough once we really looked, but the other two were just “black cat.”