Danielle in Baltimore says copies of this notice were posted on electrical poles, fences, and doors all around her apartment complex.
related: I’m a cat. It’s okay for me to be outside. (OR IS IT?!)
Does your cat have a death wish?
July 28th, 2014 · 112 comments
FILED UNDER: Baltimore · cats · clip art catastrophe · neighbors
112 responses so far ↓
#1
mb35
Wow, that’s creepy. It’s almost as if the writer is trying to say, “Next time I see your cat lying in the road, I will run it over!”
Jul 28, 2014 at 5:34 pm rating: 11
#2
kermit
Come on now, Internet, we can definitely arrive at a resolution on the indoor/outdoor cat debate issue the third or fourth (or whatever it is now) time around.
Jul 28, 2014 at 6:22 pm rating: 22
#3
Feather Blade
The cat is obviously so disgusted with its life that it is trying to commit suicide-by-vehicle… and all of these inconsiderate drivers aren’t obliging it.
Seriously, this is when you pick the cat up, dump it in your back seat, drive it to the local animal shelter, and tell them it’s suicidal and needs to be kept under watch.
Jul 28, 2014 at 7:04 pm rating: 69
#4
Iwill FindU
I don’t know that this is passive aggressive really. The cat is laying in the street so getting hit by a car is a very real risk here. Really the note writer is informing the owner of their cats very dangerous habit. If they keep letting their cat outside unsupervised it’s going to happen sooner or later. If the note writer didn’t care about the well-being of this cat they wouldn’t have taken the time to try to inform the owners. (I’m not saying they shouldn’t let the cat outside ever but maybe put it on a leash, or build a cool outside catrun they’re like a dogrun but it’ll keep your kitty safe)
Jul 28, 2014 at 8:33 pm rating: 60
#5
OMG
Stand by with a paper sack and shovel, when said dead cat appears in the roadway scoop it up and return it to the Owner with Signs posted on sack and Saying … I TOLD YOU SO ! If the owner can”t be Located then Stick a sign in its paw in the middle of the street … I TOLD YOU SO .. signed dead b/w cat
Jul 28, 2014 at 9:06 pm rating: 7
#6
Jami
I’m with U. Forget the note. Take the cat to a shelter. The owners don’t really love him anyway if they’re allowing him to lay in the street.
If he has owners. He could be a stray.
Jul 28, 2014 at 9:17 pm rating: 11
#7
Lisnya
I actually found my black and white long-haired cat in a similar situation. She was 8 weeks old and tiny as can be and she was sitting in front of a car’s wheel. The driver was begging her to get up and let him move but she didn’t care. I didn’t want to find her dead when I’d get back home, so I grabbed her.
Jul 28, 2014 at 10:03 pm rating: 15
#8
Wench
Kitty may also be showing early signs of dementia. That’s what my cat used to do when she started to become unwell (she was about 14 years old at this point), she would just lay in the road. Luckily we lived in a quiet no-thru road and had great neighbors who would drive around her (!) so she never came to any harm, but once we realized she was losing her sense of self preservation/road safety we kept her indoors.
Jul 28, 2014 at 10:22 pm rating: 24
#9
Urvogel
This is what happened to my partner’s old cat. He used to live in a quiet cul-de-sac and the cat would sunbathe on the warm asphalt. There was very little traffic so he was in no danger.
Then he moved next to a busy road and the cat still kept sunbathing on the warm asphalt. He didn’t have a cat for very long…
Jul 29, 2014 at 12:44 am rating: 6
#10
rushgirl2112
I just want to know what the cat was laying in the street. An egg? Bricks? Some sod? A bit of poo?
Jul 29, 2014 at 1:02 am rating: 27
#11
juniper
I have an uncle that aims for animals in the road.
Jul 29, 2014 at 6:28 am rating: 2
#12
MotherOfTheYear
You know in the time it took to make this flier, print out a bunch of copies, and plaster them all over the neighborhood, this lady probably could’ve knocked on a handful of doors and figured out who the cat belonged to, instead of writing this sort of helpful but somehow still creepy note.
Nahhh that’d be too much like being an adult. Fun signs everyone!
Jul 29, 2014 at 11:49 am rating: 3
#13
Lita
Okay, I gotta admit, this note was kinda cute. And I do side with the note writer, thanks to previously living across the street from a lady who would let her cats do exactly the same thing. She really shouldn’t have owned cats – I suppose she thought she was taking very good care of them (she’d forego buying her own groceries or the medicine she badly needed so she could buy them whole rotisserie chickens and burgers from Burger King (they didn’t like McDonald’s. I am NOT even kidding.), she wouldn’t let them in the house – she’d actually pick them up and put them back outside if they dared sneak in because “oh I don’t want my kitties to be all cooped up!”…things like that.) but uh, well, she was delusional in more than one way.
(Disclaimer: she had Very Good Reasons to be so delusional. She pretty much snapped when her husband died of a heart attack while jogging. I really did feel very sorry for her, but…oh, those poor cats.)
Jul 29, 2014 at 12:32 pm rating: 10
#14
Ana
Okay apparently I’m the only one who thinks that the cat owner might have written this note as a warning to people around. If it was the cat owner damn they are a horrible pet owner making their cat’s problem everyone’s instead of keeping it indoors or giving the cat away to someone who lives in the country. But maybe everyone else is right, and I’m wrong. but it is another possible circumstance that could have led to the note.
Jul 29, 2014 at 8:27 pm rating: 1
#15
Lidna
I had a cat that began to do this when he was 18 years old. The asphalt is a nice warm place to sleep come the fall, and he was totally deaf. Cars would honk, and he wouldn’t move. When I saw this, I brought him inside for six months until summer, when hopefully it would be too hot to keep doing. HE WAS NOT HAPPY those six months, and I feel for anyone trying to keep an outdoor cat IN for any length of time. When I did let him out, he ran away, age 19. I saw him on a neighbor’s porch a few weeks later, and then never again.
Jul 30, 2014 at 12:23 am rating: 3
#16
Roxy Random
Our next-door neighbor yells at the cat when she crosses onto his lawn. How does he expect her to know where the dividing line between properties is? (Fun fact, which we’ve never told him: we had the land surveyed about twenty years ago, before this dipwad moved in, and the actual property line is about two feet over on his side So technically, we own two feet of his lawn. I’ll be sure and tell the cat.)
Jul 30, 2014 at 6:57 pm rating: 5
#17
Dr. Chalkwitheringlicktacklefeff
This doesn’t make any sense. If the cat thought it shouldn’t be outside, why did it write a note to itself and then post it all over the neighbourhood?
Aug 1, 2014 at 6:46 am rating: 1
#18
Belaani
That’s what water uzis are for… how many times do you think the cat would get blasted before it would stop laying in the street? And in the meantime ( I repeat, MEANtime! ) – entertainment!
Aug 2, 2014 at 1:09 pm rating: 3
#19
Dolly
The note writer is trying to be nice because this cat is not long for this world. If it is a large apartment complex that cat will eventually meet someone who does not care to run him over or won’t see him in time to stop. So I guess they wanna let the owner know that either keep your cat inside or prepare for a kitty funeral.
I would not move a random cat out of my way. I am too afraid of it scratching or biting me or it carrying something nasty like ringworm (which I did get from a friend’s cat once). So for me, I would just slowly roll forward and either it moves or gets run over.
Aug 2, 2014 at 3:01 pm rating: 1
#20
Click Here
The last paragraph sounds so sad. This really points out not just indoor cats but also stray cats. These adorable pets should really be taken care properly to avoid this to happen.
Aug 6, 2014 at 6:42 am rating: 1
#21
kaetra
If your cat is a nuisance to your neighbors then *you* are a nuisance to your neighbors. Your pet, your responsibility. After 5 long years of a neighbor’s outdoor, non-neutered male cats spraying my doors and crawlspace vents they finally moved away. Thank goodness. I hated those cats! Nothing we tried kept them away, including expensive motion detecting water sprayers. Little bastards. Cat crap everywhere too. The number of unwanted kittens those non-spayed/neutered cats produced was simply cruel and shameful.
You have a fixed outdoor cat that doesn’t bother anyone it’s not a huge deal to me. But sometimes that’s just not the case.
Aug 6, 2014 at 4:34 pm rating: 6
#22
DougiePassiveAggressive
All this talk about outdoor cats makes me feel nostalgic for San Diego. No problems with outdoor cats in San Diego, we had coyotes! There were lots of signs, though… “Have you seen fluffy?”
Oct 8, 2014 at 4:45 pm rating: 1
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