Was my missing moggie ‘groomed’ by a neighbour?

The legal fight to ban a neighbour from feeding a cat reminds Nick Harding of his mog’s disappearance

Cat seducer! You know who you are. You lure Tiddles into your house with Sheba and convince yourself you are doing the moggy a favour, because it is not being fed properly at home. All the while, its poor owners are distraught with worry, searching for their lost pet.

Cat seduction is the UK’S dirty little secret. It is an epidemic and was highlighted this week by the case of psychotherapist Jackie Hall and her husband John, who made legal history after a four-year £24,000 fight to ban a neighbour (Nicola Lesbirel) from feeding their pet.

I believe my own cat was napped by such a person. Alvin disappeared one cold February morning in 2016 and never came back. The trail led to a serial cat seducer in a nearby street. She was notorious in the village for enticing the local moggies with salmon trimmings from the fishmonger.

I talked my way into her lair once, on the pretence that Alvin had been spotted in a garden adjoining hers. I shivered at the sight of the food bowls lines up in her conservatory, while she brazenly denied feeding any felines.

When I investigated cat loss further for my book, A Tale of Two Kitties, I was horrified to discover just how prevalent the act of cat seduction is. We are a nation of kitty baiters. Only last night, for example, I was sitting at a table with four friends, and two confessed to regularly feeding other people’s cats. One had lured in two that afternoon with boeuf bourguignon.

Alvin’s disappearance, I later learnt, was a textbook case. Cats hate change and the sudden erection of a work cabin and the loss of a row of leylandii must have frazzled his little feline mind. Most likely he was already being groomed. He was no

Second-time lucky: Nick Harding and new cat, Barry, bottom; Nicola Lesbirel, inset stranger to other people’s homes and would often enter through cat flaps to empty food bowls.

Cats always have a plan B. They hedge their bets and can sometimes have several other “homes” where they go for attention, peace or food. We never truly own them. They choose to stay in our homes because it suits them. As soon as something happens that upsets them, they’re off.

As author Andrew Vachss wrote: “Cats are the lap-dancers of the animal world. Soon as you stop shelling out, they move on, find another lap. They’re furry little sociopaths. Pretty and slick. In love with themselves.”

I could never prove that the village pied piper of pussycats was Alvin’s plan B, but there were several sightings and overwhelming circumstantial evidence. I was powerless, however, and spent many evenings outside her house, calling his name forlornly.

For every sad poster on a lamppost, there is a family in mourning. Former police detective Colin Butcher runs The Pet Detectives agency and has no sympathy for those who argue they are providing a better environment for the cats they entice.

“One in three of our cases is a stolen cat,” explains Colin. “Someone who starts to feed a cat that is not their own and takes it in is a thief. Some argue that the cat goes by its own free will, but we don’t agree. There is a point of law in the Theft Act that says someone can steal property even if they come to it by finding it. The only defence they have is that they took all reasonable

steps to trace the owner. Wilful blindness is theft.”

Butcher agrees that cat luring is at epidemic levels. “In just about every investigation we do, we meet someone who says ‘I took a stray cat in once’. None of them took any steps to find the owners. That is stealing.”

Unfortunately, cats don’t help themselves with their fickle nature. Butcher’s agency worked with the BBC on the 2013 documentary Secret Life of the Cat, in which the movements of 50 felines in one Surrey village were tracked using GPS collars. He was “staggered” to discover how many cats were going in other people’s homes.

In the most extreme case Butcher has dealt with, the guilty party had 16 kidnapped cats. Recently in Waterlooville, Hants, he dealt with a family that had lost three cats to the same woman.

There are measures cat owners can take. A tracking collar can monitor their moggy’s movements and discover any second homes. Owners can also

‘Cats are like lap dancers. As soon as you stop shelling out, they move on’

entice a cat to stay at home more by hiding treats around the house and leaving food in a cosy, quiet room.

After a year of mourning Alvin’s loss, we got another. Barry is a pedigree Bengal and rarely finds the motivation to get up from the sofa. It would take a huge effort to lure him anywhere. But just in case, he wears a collar with a warning: Do Not Feed – Allergies.