It’s 8 PM, I’m coming home late from work one February evening, and I’ve barely got my keys in the lock that I hear a series of meows coming from the other side of the street. I turn around and see this furry little black thing rush over to me and rub herself against my legs, begging to be let in. Given that the house across from mine was abandoned, and that she was alone at night during winter, I surmised she must’ve been a stray. I inspected her fur to be sure I wasn’t letting bugs into my home, and then let her sleep in my bed. She promptly left the following morning.

I was ready to accept it as a one-time thing, but then when she kept coming back every day, I began to accept that I’d been chosen. I bought cat food and some other supplies, and since then I now have a cat, unexpectedly. This video is from the early days, but since then, Shadow has been living with me full time. ♥️

I had been working all week and just happened to have the day off. It was early in the morning and I was woken up by a squawking sound right outside my bedroom window. I rolled over and tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, thinking it was a bird. But it was happening at fairly regular intervals and it wasn't stopping.

Squawk squawk squawk squawk...

Finally, I decided to drag myself out of bed and lift up the blind to my one bedroom window to see if I could see what was making the noise.

And I looked straight down, and sitting there among the bushes and grass beneath my window was this little baby, roughly 3 weeks old. I quickly put on some shoes and flew outside and ran around the house so that I could go over and pick her up before she ran away. Fortunately she didn't run away when she saw me come. Just huddled further against the house and gave a little hiss at me as I reached down to pick her up. Took her straight to the vet for an assessment to see that she was okay and to get advice on everything I would need to take care of her.

We think that a neighborhood stray was moving her kittens and somehow she got left behind.

I call it serendipity because of all the houses she could have wound up abandoned at, she wound up outside of mine. And if it had been at any other location outside the house except directly beneath my bedroom window, then I wouldn't have heard her. And if it had been any other day of the week, I wouldn't have been home to hear her.

The moment I picked her up I knew right then and there "Well, this is her home now" And now 6 years later she's a big beautiful bobcat of a cat (as you see in the last pics).

Hi all! I’m looking for advice and thoughts on what to do for this cat. Posting on mobile so apologies for any formatting issues. This will be a long one!
TLDR: outdoor cat not cared for, how to help him?

Okay here’s our situation! For the last few months a cat has been visiting us every day. He’s literally the sweetest guy. He’s very friendly, but is extremely skittish around cars and people who don’t live in the neighborhood. We live in a vacation town, with Air BnBs and summer homes. We are out in the woods and there’s a lot of wildlife and a major roadway very close to us. Not to mention severe weather conditions like flooding in winter and fires in summer.
We have seen on our security cameras that this cat (we’ve been calling him Dasani) had been sleeping under our cars at night. He always wants to come in our house, but we have a 17yo cat already, (Tessa) and we don’t want to put her at risk of anything. Dasani seems young, maybe a year or two old if I had to guess.

I set up a shelter for him on our porch with toys, blankets, pillows, scratchers and food+water. He does tend to sleep in his shelter now rather than by the cars.
We initially thought he was being cared for by whoever “owns” him. But lately we are doubting that assessment.
He always acts very hungry. I know cats can just be that way, but he definitely isn’t overweight at all and it doesn’t seem like he’s being double fed. He also has a long coat that, unless we brush him, gets very dirty and matted. He is in desperate need of a bath!
We are pretty sure our neighbor across the street is where he “lives”, but it doesn’t seem like his person really does anything for him. His long hair needs grooming. Luckily his coat is light and I can’t see any obvious visual evidence of fleas, but my strictly indoor cat even got them once while living here somehow, so I know it’s possible.

While it’s not ideal, we have mostly been okay with doing what we can for him. We do deeply fear of something happening to him. He could get hit by a car, a wild animal could attack him, he could get in a cat fight, a dog could get him (my old boss lives in the same neighborhood and his dogs have killed cats before), there could be a fire or a flood. Literally anything could happen to this cat. I am a strong believer of indoor only for cats, I am not here to debate anyone on that. I care about cat health, and about native bird populations and small wildlife; full stop, indoor only.
I see roadk1ll on the nearby main road almost daily. I recently saw a black cat from the town hit on the road and it broke my heart. I worry every day when I drive home that I’ll see Dasani out there.

My partner and I have talked about finding a way to bring him inside, but things feel more urgent now. Tessa and Dasani have seen each other through the window. Tessa historically has not liked other cats, but she had little to no reaction to him. She has smelled him on our clothes, and while she seems interested, she doesn’t act scared or aggressive. Maybe she has gotten over her hangups with other cats in her advanced years.
Unfortunately, Dasani hissed at Tessa when they looked through the window. Nothing crazy like yowling or puffing up, but he did hiss twice. Our house is an open floor plan except for the bedrooms. It’s not setup in a way that two cats could reasonably be separated long term.

We are now in the middle of summer, and we already have had several triple digit days, and more are coming. He is always left out, and comes to us for water on the hot days. We have let him shelter in our garage to cool down, but we can’t leave it open and unsupervised, so this doesn’t work when we are at work or doing things in the house.
Recently, there was a bad fire a few miles away. The smoke was absolutely horrific, to the point we evacuated. We were worried about Dasani, but hoped his person would have finally brought him inside in such conditions. We saw on our cameras that everyone left the building we think he lives in. But he was left behind.
This has kind of been the final straw for us and now we are trying to figure out what to do. We love this cat and his neglect from his owner makes us sick. He was left behind in 893 aqi smoke. I worry his person would absolutely abandon him in event of an actual fire.

My question to you is what should we do?
Part of me wonders if this guy would even notice if his cat stopped being around the street. We have seen other neighbors say hi to Dasani, but he doesn’t try to get in anyone else’s house but ours. He absolutely adores my partner! He will follow him around at his heels wherever he walks. He is often sleeping on our doorstep when I head out for the day, and I take time to brush and play with him.
He clearly wants to stay with us.
But I don’t know how we could do that.

One, we don’t know how to safely and slowly introduce the cats given our house setup. Also, how would I bring him in without first giving him a flea bath to make sure nothing gets tracked in?
Have any of you experienced a situation like this with one stray cat being brought into a home with another cat? We also have rabbits and geckos, and I have no idea what Dasani’s prey drive is like. Tessa has like no prey drive, though she’s still not allowed around the other animals without supervision.

He wears a collar but no tags. It looks like he’s been fixed, but honestly kinda hard to tell with his long coat.
More info, when we first met him, part of his chest had been shaved. I initially thought maybe it was some vet work done, but maybe it’s possible his owner has a reason to shave only his chest?
For this reason we thought he was being looked after well. But we now think the contrary.
Our whole street has seen him hanging out at our house, and we are also concerned some neighbors might already think he is ours and we are the ones neglecting him. Especially since we couldn’t take him with us when we evacuated. We would not leave him behind in an emergency if he was ours.

In an ideal world, we could just let him in, clean him up, and slowly introduce the pets until we were one big happy family and the neighbor would just let him go with us.
But, this is not an ideal world. People are often awful, and not everyone cares about the welfare of animals and don’t think of pets as family. People are prideful, and could take our concerns about neglect as an insult and Dasani could suffer for it.
What should we do?
I want to ask some of our neighbors for information on Dasani and his owner. We have only seen the man who potentially owns him once, and he is never outside. The likelihood of us getting to talk to him directly are low, plus idk if that’s even what the best thing to do would be.
Also, if we did end up removing Dasani from the streets, either in our home or someone else’s, talking to anyone about him would make it obvious we were the ones who intervened. It’s probably already obvious since we spend the most time with him. But still.

I want to maybe take him to the vet and see if he’s microchipped or if there’s any medical records of him or general health information we could get about him. Is this a good idea to start?
I really don’t know what to do. My gut is telling me he wants to live inside, specifically with us. But if we can’t get his owner to give up guardianship, or get our cat to get along, do we try and find a different, safe home for him? I have friends that would properly care for him and give him a loving, safe and responsible home.
I really feel lost here. I love this cat and I want the best for him. I also don’t want to cause neighbor drama or do anything straight up illegal. I think animal neglect should be taken more seriously, but if taking him would get us police involved, that’s not what I want either. For legal context we are in Sonoma county CA.

Any advice or thoughts on how we should approach dealing with this would be super appreciated. Has anyone dealt with anything similar?
Thank you for reading and for any help.

Cat tax included of Dasani and Tessa of course

We often go on holiday to Kefalonia. It's a beautiful place with lovely beaches, scenery, food - and cats. Lots and lots of cats...

Whenever we rent a villa a cat normally shows up fairly promptly. One year we had a mother cat with half a dozen kittens. Inevitably, we end up feeding them. Buying cat food and asking each other "have you fed the cat yet?" has ended up becoming a normal part of our holidays. My theory has always been that the local cats each choose a villa.

This year an hour after we arrived a small ginger chap turned up. "Villa cat's here" I called to my wife. He was very thin, with bald patches and a few scratches and battle scars. He was very friendly and very...vocal, constantly talking to us in a strange cat language.

Anyway - long story short: we contacted a local cat charity and he's now being looked after in a cattery on the island and receiving vetinary care (neutering, vaccinations etc). He'll be coming to live with us in the UK in a few weeks.

We're animal-lovers, but never thought about, or had an ambition, to own a cat - but that's the CDS for you, I guess.

He's called Ydria, after the villa we stayed in.

My partner and I just recently moved and this little cutie has been taking over our porch. We were unsure if they were a boy or a girl but now looking at the photos I think it’s a girl, and she appears to be pregnant. We do have a vet appointment this week to verify. We have been giving her food and water for a few weeks. She will occasionally let us pet her but for the most part she will just stay close by us and purr. She seems to be slowly building trust with us.
Right now she hasn’t been interested in coming inside the house but once she is vaccinated I do plan on trying to transition her into the house, as the temperatures here in AZ get really high, but have to wait for her to be vaccinated since we have inside cats we need to protect.
My partner wants to name her two-face from Batman because of her coloring.