We seem to have been adopted by a stray cat. This is not good news.

The story is SWMBO was in the front garden a week or so ago when this very young and very thin cat wearing a pink collar wanders up the drive making a bee line for the dogs water bowl that we'd placed there for our 17 year old dog. It seems the cat had assumed the bowl might have some food in it. Anyway 'her indoors' rushes to get our dog inside before it spots the cat. When she comes out a few minutes later the cat's gone. The next day the cat comes back. It's rubbing itself around my wifes legs and meowing etc... Trying to be friendly and plainly asking for food. Anyway she ignores it and goes inside. The cat goes hangs around for 10 mins in the driveway and then goes away. Next day it's back and it's getting really friendly and obviously desperate for food. We give in and give it a tin of dog food whilst we go inside. It clears the bowl in 5 minutes! Late afternoon it's back again. Another small tin of dog food. We ask around the village and no one admits to owning the cat though several people have seen it around. It's obviously come from one of the other villages a few miles away. On Friday am I take the cat to our vest to see if it's chipped and also to worm/flea treat it. It's not chipped :-( The cat is now getting very attached to us and is desperate to get into the house. We put some blankets in the summer house so it can go in at night and it's been doing so. We've also been feeding it morning and night and it's now reached the stage where it actually leaves so food in it's dish so I assume it's starting to get better. It's obviously undernourished and it's desperate for company. All the time it's trying to get in the house... you can't open the back door without it being there and trying to push it's way in. We did try letting it in but our old dog went bonkers and we have to be fair to him so cat had to go out again. We're not cat people at all (I mean REALLY not cat people) but this poor cat is tugging at our heart strings and we would take it in if we could but just can't with our dog there. We contacted three branches of the cat protection league and they all say they're not interested... just too many unwanted cats. The problem is we just can't have it around. We can't even take our own dog out into the garden for a wee now because the cat's around and the dog it too old to cope with this.

Last night we shut the summer house door and didn't feed it. It was at the back door meowing until 9pm when we went to bed. SWMBO was awake most of the night worrying about it.

We just don't know what to do....