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"They never got the exceptionally lucky cat back."


FYP

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This is a joke, but cats can find their way home really well. If that was the same cat in the neighborhood, it would've stuck around and found its owners. That kitty was fleeing.

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umm, cats get lost all the time.
They take a concussion from some kind of accident or they get a bit senile/confused when they get older.
They don't have to be intentionally fleeing to get lost.



OP is clearly better off with her neighborhood thinking she's a bad person. These people are freaking nuts.
How incredibly rude is it to notice how late someone comes home on Tuesday or ask what religion they are? Get some freaking manners people. That's really terrible.


My advice is to just laugh at how stupid they all are and have fun with it.
This is mostly the strategy of my Dad who is retired in Florida so has a ton of experience dealing with nosy neighbors with nothing better to do.


My Dad tends to like his beer.
He knows that half the neighborhood thinks he's an alki just from the bottles in his recycling (they probably aren't that far off). Especially if it's after he's been entertaining that week and he has even more bottles than usual in there.

He doesn't care. He knows reasonably well which neighbors are kind of looking at him like they've been poking around in his recycling bin and just laughs to himself about it.

Recently he had hip-surgery so he's been using a walker and now he's okay with a cane.
He has been trying to time his walk to his mailbox so as not to coincide with nosy neighbors who want to pester him with more and more questions about how he's doing.

Asking how he's doing and caring about his recovery is one thing. But it turns into a 5-10 minute chat that is beyond boring and can be difficult to get out of when he really feels like he should be sitting down.

But now he's supposed to be doing more walking around the neighborhood and he knows that everyone is going to see this as an invitation to go right up to him and appease their curiousity.

So he's thinking of waving his cane high in the air and acting like a senile, old man while uttering random obscenities just to freak everyone out.
I told him I think it's a good plan.

He likes most of his neighbors of course.
It's just that one small-talk conversation after another about, "sure has been awhile since we've had rain" can get old and annoying pretty fast.