Rehoming an outdoor cat

I'm good friends with a couple down the street. They are buying a house and will soon be moving. They "have" an outdoor cat. We doubt that the cat can be successfully moved. How can we get the cat to start coming to my house to be fed?

The back story:

Some years back, some live-in house flippers bought the house next to the one my friends are renting. The flippers apparently got a kitten at the time they moved in. The cat grew up being an outdoor cat. After about a year, the remodel was done and the flippers moved on to their next project. Supposedly they gave the cat to someone a mile or two away. Well... the cat promptly found her way back "home" to an empty house. My friends ended up "adopting" her and have fed her ever since. Quite quickly the cat effectively moved one house over.

The cat trusts me more than anyone else. I'm about the only person who can pick up, hold, carry, and groom her. Thus, we'd like to "move" her to my house. I'm about 1500 feet away which seems to be outside her roaming range. One night I did manage to coax her most of the way to my house, and then carried her the rest of the way.

She's 100% an outdoor cat. She plaintively meows when brought inside and the door closes behind her. She'd rather be outside in a frosty night than come inside a warm house. Thus, I will not be able to confine her inside my house to acclimate her to the new situation.

Any suggestions?

Well, I've never done this on purpose, but still: the way I see it, cats are shameless opportunists. If your friends stop feeding her, and you start feeding her, she will move. I'm guessing the hardest part will be for your friends to stop feeding her, and start turning her away. But the worst case scenario is that they move, and the cat comes back to an empty house, and goes hungry until she finds another source of food, hopefully you.

How about they start feeding her less, or something really boring, while you start feeding her something she loves? If you call for her and handfeed her something like raw chicken (or something more pocketfriendly :-) ) whenever you meet her she'll learn to connect both you and the call with good food. I think she'd come to your call at your house if she's hungry and within hearing distance quite fast.

I'd be careful about carrying her to your house if she struggles though, they're excellent at remembering who forced them to do what. And bear in mind that you may live in the middle of some other cat's territory.

I moved in the neighborhood once with my old cats. One of them was a roamer and realized where his old house was. We had lived in the old house for about a year. He kept going back to the old house when it was time to be fed and sometimes I would have to go collect him. Eventually, he forgot about the old house and got into the habit of eating at the new. It took a little time and a bit of patience, but it worked out fine.

It also takes patience and a lot of tolerance, but you can turn an outdoor cat into an indoor cat. My two now have never been outdoor cats, but I had an old boy who was. When he was getting old and really very much unable to defend himself - blind in one eye, arthritic... I started keeping him in. He didn't very much like it for a while. There were bouts of seemingly endless meowing at the door... but he became accustomed to it relatively quickly and he became happy with his situation.

It helps to do the conversion from outdoor cat to indoor during the winter. She cries at the door because she's not used to the idea of being in the house. Eventually she will give up and enjoy the lap of luxury...

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Originally Posted by lph

How about they start feeding her less, or something really boring, while you start feeding her something she loves? If you call for her and handfeed her something like raw chicken (or something more pocketfriendly :-) ) whenever you meet her she'll learn to connect both you and the call with good food. I think she'd come to your call at your house if she's hungry and within hearing distance quite fast.

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I already have her trained to come when called - but only when she's hungry. I can whistle and she'll come running or trotting, though sometimes it takes five minutes for her to show up. When she's not hungry, I think she often goes out of hearing range.

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Originally Posted by Biciclista

She cries at the door because she's not used to the idea of being in the house.

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I think part of this is an unease with being trapped. Likely she wants an escape route in case a predator saunters out of the next room.