Hi there, I’m completely new to Reddit so forgive me if there’s any mistakes in this.

Last year in September, I had just come home from work and opened my car door when I heard a loud meowing. I opened my door a bit more and cute cat ran up and after a minute or two of just talking and looking at him, he climbed up into the car and onto my lap.

A part of me immediately wanted to take him inside but my neighborhood is full of outdoor cats, so 1 knew he was probably one of my neighbors. After a few minutes of cuddling him and giving him some food, I went back inside and for a bit I thought it was a one time thing.

Then a week or two later, the same cat was sitting on my doorstep. At this point, I couldn’t in my right mind leave him outside and he was looking really bony and skinny, so I took him inside.

He ate like crazy and was absolutely the cuddliest cat I’ve ever seen, he was an absolute sweetheart and after a bit of hanging out with him I noticed he was declawed, which in my brain explained how he’d gotten so skinny being an outdoor cat with no way to get food for himself or protect the food he did have.

So then started my search for his owner. I didn’t really want to give him back, I mostly just wanted to ask if l could keep him. Especially because they’d let their declawed cat on the loose around the neighborhood.

I took him to the vet to see if he had a microchip a. did, but there was no information filled out, then I took him to the humane society to see if they had any record of him and they did not, and as a last resort I posted on several local Facebook community pages to see if anyone was missing him.

Almost a week had gone by with nothing when I decided to just go around and ask my neighbors if they were missing a cat. A couple doors down from my house I had found the owner, and they told me he was 9 years old, and that they had him since he was a kitten, but he didn’t like they’re dogs so they decided to make him an outdoor cat. I asked if I could adopt him and they agreed.

Over the next couple days, I noticed that something was off with the cat. Where at first he was eating like a lawnmower, now he was barely eating at all, and he was still so very skinny.

I decided to take him to the vet and they were immediately concerned when we got there. He was extremely jaundiced and extremely underweight. They took a blood sample and found that he likely was going into liver failure due to malnutrition.

I messaged the original owner regarding the situation and they told me that it was crazy that this was happening and that he was just fine with them.

(Despite the fact they didn’t even notice him missing for 5 days when I had him and his food bowl outside that all the other stray cats have access to was filled with rain water)