A London family have fought a £20,000 legal battle to stop their neighbour from feeding their cat. The catin question is a Maine Coon named Ozzy, who has apparently spent much of his life playing his owners off against their neighbours.
Jackie and John Hall took landscape gardener Nicola Lesbirel to court in order to prevent her from taking care of their cat. The issues started four years ago when they noticed that Ozzy was ‘frequently away from their home for long periods’ and when he returned he appeared to have been ‘fed, groomed and cared for by someone else’.
The Halls claimed that Lesbirel had repeatedly taken off Ozzy’s collar and replaced it with one engraved with her own phone number and the words: ‘My home.’ Which, as you can imagine, they weren’t best pleased about.
The law is ostensibly on the Halls' side, as cats are technically considered property, so an active attempt to bribe a cat away from the actual owners is considered to be a form of theft.
Before the case ended up in court, Hall vs Lesbirel was a private matter, where both parties exchanged letters and text messages. Lesbirel is quoted as having said: ‘He [Ozzy] is very loved and well cared for and he is very attached to his territory, and to me.
‘Surely leaving him where he is determined to be and where you can be reassured he is settled and happy and healthy is the best thing for everyone involved, both feline and human.’
To which the Halls responded: ‘He is not your cat and we are not just giving him over to you.’
The neighbours settled the case in December and according to the court order, which has now been made public (much to the delight of the internet), Nicola Lesbirel has promised that she will not feed Ozzy cat food, tinned fish or meat, and will not remove his collar.
Additionally, she promised not to put Ozzy in a box or basket or to let him into her home or to invite him in. It was agreed that if Ozzy is making a disturbance at the front of her flat, she is permitted to carry him to her back garden.
So, all’s well that ends well, and we all now know a lot more about the laws around cat ownership.
Shall we start a crowdfund to buy Nicola her own cat, perhaps?
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