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An ethical dilemma

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Blackjack Gabbiani

Blackjack Gabbiani

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Yesterday on our walk, me and my dad found a kitten. It's very young, and was walking in the street. So after asking at a few houses if anyone knew who it belonged to and getting no answer, we took it home.

Mom wants to keep it. She says that the original owners didn't take good care of it, since it was by itself and very dirty (it had fleas too).

So now we have an ethical dilemma here. Should we find the owners and give them their cat back, knowing that it may not be taken care of very well, or do we keep it and care for it, knowing that the original owners could be missing it?
 
Keep it

If you feel bad about just keeping it, you could put signs up saying you found him/her. If you get a response then voice your concerns over their treatment of it. I dunno... but I would just keep it.
 
If I were in that situation, I would keep it. If it wasn't being taken care of properly (and it sounds like it wasn't), I wouldn't be in any rush to return it to the owners. And it's also possible that the owners just abandoned it anyway, as long as you haven't seen any "lost kitten" signs or anything.
 
If it was just a kitten and wasn't tagged, isn't there a chance that it could just be a stray? That's how I got my first cat (although it was roaming around my front yard and not a street).
 
Keep it; it would be better off being taken care of than to be neglected, I think.
 
Ookinkyokon said:
Shelter
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Seconded. Maybe you should report the kitten as a lost pet at some local animal shelter, and then put up a missing pet announcement regarding the kitten in some newspaper, or have the shelter do it for you.

You can try to arrange with the shelter to keep the kitten if it goes unclaimed for, let's say, one month.
 
Having lived in a household that takes in pets no one else wants, I'd say keep it as long as you can care of it. If you can't take care of it then give it over to the animal shelter.

And this kind of reminds me of something that happened around Christmas. My mom found an eight week old boxer mix puppy wondering our neighborhood. Though we couldn't kepp it because our six year dog wasn't get along with it and my sister's kitten wouldn't have been too thrilled either.
 
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