u/ezyBREz

I think it's first important to note that the area I live in has a lot of outside cats, mostly stray, and cars speeding down the road right in front of our (my mom and I's) house all the time. Lots of street traffic and people out here don't care about cars and animals. I'll leave it at that.

It first started three years ago. My stepbrother, who lived with us at the time, had found a mommy cat and her three NEWBORN babies under a deck. We had seen her here and there a month or so before, and she had a raggedy collar that clearly showed she had lived outside for at least a couple months. She was very skinny, but very friendly to people, so we knew she had been someone's cat. We had dogs at the time, so we bought a large cage with multiple levels (bougie outside kennel basically) and after two months, when the kennel was getting cramped, made room in the office and housed them there. We got them all their shots, had the mother spayed, and had all three kittens (boys) neutered when they were six months old. We put them all onto a credible adoption site and managed to get one of them adopted out. (We unfortunately, but fortunately 👀👀, still have the mom and two other boys, always asking friends and family if they want cats).

Maybe a year or so later, my mom started seeing a little kitten running up to her, no owner in sight, while she was taking the dogs out to pee (leashed ofc). We waited about a month, noticing he was always outside and always hungry and thirsty (we know cats lie about not being fed, but he looked, not as skinny as the mommy cat, but not a good weight for a kitten) before taking him into our home. Thankfully, we convinced my granddad to adopt him (he has since somehow taught the cat to "box" and it is one of the most adorable things to watch).

Maybe 3-6 months later we started seeing a kitten with a flea collar on. We kept an eye on him, fed him, but weren't going to take him in since he had a flea collar and thus an owner who seemed to care about him. Maybe a month later, after a neighbor we knew was feeding stray cats moved, we noticed he didn't have his flea collar on anymore. After a week went by and the collar was not replaced, we took him in and got in touch with the neighbor who swore she hadn't been taking care of a cat with his description.

It was at this point, we were relatively certain all these cats we had rescued had been one of our neighbors, but while we had suspicions, we didn't know for sure. I mean, all the cats were people friendly, so they had to have had some human interaction. None of them had been spayed or neutered when we took them in and all of them had been various levels of skinny.

For this particular cat, we'll call him Julius, when he turned 6 months old, I talked to the vet about getting him neutered, noting that we were pretty sure he had an owner before us, but that he wasn't very well taken care of and we had never picked up a fixed cat from the street in front of our house. I'd go into a rant about how the hick country vets out where I live wanted to do a ultrasound to see if he had been neutered, but I'll save the 0-star review novel I plan to write on their page and just say that when we took him to a very trusted and respected vet we had been going to in the city before we moved to buttfuck nowhere, it took them two minutes to physically check him and then bust out the microchip reader and scan him. Bam. Microchip number and the 99% certainty he had been neutered. I went home and attempted to register the number, only to be told the number was already registered.

I did hesitate here. We had found him outside at 2-3 months, alone, hawks and snakes known to be around in this area, speeding cars up and down the road at ridiculous speeds (i know I sound like an old grumpy white man rn but these rednecks are actually so inconsiderate of wildlife in the area and I'm traumatized by a possum I thought I had saved that had just been playing dead when I moved him from out the middle of the road under a nice tree.... but saw him still there the next morning, so just..... okay??) and no one had come to us to ask about a missing kitten, we hadn't heard anything from the neighborhood social groups or announcement boards, and I fell in love with him, even though he's the biggest asshole I've ever met (apparently gray cats can be like that?? He's our first gray cat). So I threw the number away, kissed my cat, and continued on with life.

Finally, this January. My mom and I had bought a heated cat house online and put it out for the stray cats so they could stay warm during the one freeze expected for this winter. By this time we had seen another cat outside for about 3-4 months. We called him Lysander. He wasn't noticeably skinny but we had noticed he hung around one house in particular, something we really hadn't seen consistently from the other cats who all came from a public, extremely small grassy strip across the street. We had also noticed another cat, who looked very much like him, but smaller, who would hang around him a lot. They would always come running immediately when they heard food being poured into a bowl, and I'm pretty sure they were the main users of the cat house we had bought.
This smaller cat was fairly new though. Lysander was probably around in September but this smaller cat we had just started seeing at the beginning of the year. My mom had seen, multiple times, over the next month or so, that when the people across the street came home, the smaller cat would go running up to them, follow them to their house, and then come running back right after, obviously having been shut out the house.
So now, we were certain they were the owners, and felt like we could safely assume that it was their cats we had been kittnapping. We VOWED we could not take this cat in, even though she was skinny and dirty, since we put together a timeline and realized they were probably getting new kittens right after we took in the one they had, and that this cycle had been repeating. Not wanting anymore kittens, and knowing our house was getting way too full of precious animals, we tried our best to ignore it. We had also been planning to move this year after some thing happened and had no more ties to this God forsaken county and are desperate to move back to the city.
Mid February, I noticed the small cat looked pregnant. She was skinny enough that I could clearly see her middle was wider than her hips. In hopeful denial, my mom reasoned that she could just be a small cat and that we still COULD NOT take her in. I put out food for her and kept my eye out.
We didn't really see her again until late April or the first days of May, when I was taking one of the dogs out to the grass, noticing my dog was looking over in the house's direction, and bam. There she was and at least FOUR kittens. I took a picture and texted my mom who was on a trip who texted back "WE HAVE NO ROOM!!"
For the next week we kept an eye out for them, but neither of us had spotted any of them since. We truly hoped they were keeping the kittens, who had hair, but were definitely very very small, probably a month old when I first saw them, inside.
Our hopes were dashed on Mother's Day evening. A big storm was coming and while taking the dogs out for their last pee pee of the night, my mom saw a kitten. The storm was due within the hour, so, cursing the neighbors under her breath, my mon put the dogs back inside and went out to get the kitten. We searched for 30-45 minutes for the other kittens but couldn't hear or see any of them, and I knew they all had some white fur, so they should've been relatively easy to see in the dark with the flashlight. The mommy cat was outside too and just by looking at her, you could tell she was just skin and bones. We put the baby in a large cat carrier in the garage, put a clean, dry towel in front of thr kennel with a bowl of food for the mommy and left the garage door open just enough so she could easily get in and out.
The next morning, she was still lying right in front of the kennel, food gone. The baby was probably a month and a half, as he was walking around, but was definitely wobbly on his feet and his coordination was anything but cat like. It took us half a day to go back on our promise and we brought them into the house and into their own room. For the first day, we considered getting the mom spayed and then releasing her back to the street and her "owners" but were just so appalled by their complete disregard for her whenever she greeted them from coming home, and how skinny she was. When I took her to the vet, they agreed she was probably too skinny to have kept nursing (cause the baby was right at the start of being weaned off her) more than one kitten. They assured me that the kittens were old enough at the time to be safely separated from the mom and survive, though not recommended, but agreed that as I had seen a car the first day I saw the kittens pull up and seem to talk to the neighbors about the kittens, and the fact we never saw or heard any of the other babies, even to this day, that they were likely given away to other people.
Anyway, my mom and I eventually decided, after one of my grandfather's friends conveniently talked to him about wanting a cat, that we would keep the mommy and adopt her to the nice lady.
As for the baby, we were fucked the moment we picked him up. He's been integrated with our permanent cats and has become instant best friends with my 9yo Mainecoon-Ragdoll mutt.

We still see Lysander roaming outside every now and then and he now has a flea collar on him. He seems to be doing okay, and we're finally getting around to getting the house on the market, so this mommy and baby ARE officially the last cats we will kittynap.

Sorry this was long, but it was 8 cats in three years. They're all living happy, the first mama, her last two babies who are a bonded pair now, and Julius, all have the shiniest and silkiest coats ever, live up life with their $300 cat tower they've ripped the stuffing out of, and have taken the newest mommy cat in very well while she, and the other mommy cat we first got three years ago, wait for the nice lady to finish arrangements and take them into her home.
I don't feel bad. All eight are being well fed and cared for now, all living a life of AC in the South heat, only worrying about how it's been 6 hours since they've last eaten and are, according to them, of course, as hungry as they were when we rescued/kittynappd them.

Say what you want; my mom and I know we've made their lives far more comfortable than they would've been had we left them.

TL;DR My mom and I rescued 6 cats we didn't know were my neighbors that hadn't been getting fed well, and finally put the pieces together after seeing them actively ignore the mom and kitten that were definitely theirs and rescuing them, making for 8 rescued cats over 3 years.