Anxiety Aunt: Help! I left my cat with my neighbour while I went on holiday and now she won’t give her back

Dear Aunty, In mid-2024, a few months after rescuing a kitten, I went on an open-ended holiday. My neighbour agreed to look after the cat for a few months while I travelled. While overseas, I ended up sparking up a relationship with a man in London and decided to stay an extra few months. I got back two weeks ago and the first thing I did was go across to my neighbour to retrieve my cat. However, she refused to give her to me. She said, that I have been gone too long and the cat barely knows me and has grown attached to her and vice versa. Earlier this week the cat was in my garden so I grabbed her and brought her inside. To be fair she did seem unsettled and was scratching to get out. A day later, she slipped out the door and I haven’t seen her since. I am assuming she is back at my neighbour’s house. I am a bit torn as to how to proceed. What do you suggest? Yours, Betrayed Dear Betrayed My dear your Aunt knows as much about the legalities of ownership as One knows about mountaineering — which is diddly squat. Is possession really nine tenths of the law? Or is that just something that gets spouted in courtrooms in TV legal dramas? One truly hasn’t the foggiest to be honest. One supposes One could google it but your Aunt doesn’t like sparking up Google because One often finds Oneself plummeting down some random rabbit hole and losing several hours finding out all Pavlov’s dog and how that relates to human behaviour. And before One knows it, the day has gone, One has missed Wheel Of Fortune and old Bert Saunders is chapping on the door for our afternoon gym session. It can be most disorientating, Betrayed, so One prefers to only do a Google search when One must. Thankfully finding out the ins and outs of legal ownership is not something your Aunt has ever had to concern Oneself with, having never needed to split One’s worldly goods following a relationship breakdown. That is largely due to the fact One has always preferred to live alone, even when entangled in a love affair. Much better that after a roll in the hay, your gentleman in question splits to their own pad to perform their ablutions and to sleep. It helps keep the romance alive, when you don’t have scrub their skid marks off your pan or wake up to the prospect of morning breath in your face and the ominous odour of gas under your doona, don’ t you agree, Betrayed? But back to the matter at hand, while One cannot offer much in terms of legal advice if you insist on trying to get the cat back, what One does know about is neighbourhood dynamics. And of that matter One would say this; try and avoid conflict at all costs. After all, do you really want to see the fur fly in a battle over a moggy that may result in discomfort and disquiet in your street, which is meant to be your sanctuary? And to be fair, if the cat was a kitten when you left and you have been gone for the majority of its life, then it probably has bonded more with your neighbour and her claim on it does have legs. Four of them to be precise. So how should you proceed? Well, that decision is yours to make Betrayed but for your Aunt’s ten cent’s worth One would suggest the most harmonious solution would be to either cut your losses and let your neighbour keep the cat or come to some kind of co-parenting agreement that benefits both parties. That way if either you, or your neighbour, go travelling again, there is always somewhere else for the cat to go and feel at home. Hopefully if you sell it as a positive thing, your neighbour will be on board and harmony will return to your street. Best of luck!