Another unsent email
Dear Housemate,
I can't help but notice that despite your claims and reassurances you are still not feeding or giving water to your cat at regular intervals, such as every day perhaps. I do not know how the hell you manage to justify yourself in your head, but you really need to realise that this is not acceptable behaviour. You are acting as if your own comfort is more important than J's life. This is a complete lie, and is the sort of thinking that leads humans to destroy entire species for their own comfort and enjoyment.
You argue that he is a cat, he can hunt for himself (I am ignoring for the moment the basic objectionability of this). Then you put a bell on his collar to alert birds and other prey to his approach so that his hunts will be unsuccessful. Do you really want him to eat the rubbish out of people's bins and make himself sick?
You claim that your fiancée has fallen in love with him and will take care of him for you. Now despite the fact that this is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, and not for her to do for you, I would nevertheless be happy that at least he is being looked after properly. The problem is that he is not. Mark and I are still having to feed him and change his water, she is not doing it any more than you are.
You have said that before you go to work you do not have time to fill his bowls, and by the time you get home we've done it for you. Quite apart from the fact that when Mark and I are unable to do it for you his bowls remain empty for days on end, it takes merely seconds to pick up a bowl from the floor, dip it in the big bin of cat food next to it and put it down again, especially if you are already in the kitchen getting some breakfast for yourself.
For goodness sake Housemate, we are the ones who have just been away for nearly 4 days, and yet it is our cat who has an abundance of food and water available (no thanks to you) and yours who has none.
My biggest worry here is that we are soon moving out, as are you. We are going into separate houses, possibly on the other side of town from each other, or maybe not even in the same town as each other. I am aware that you still believe J to be your cat, and thus will take him with you. I cannot believe that you or your partner will put any more effort into looking after him then than you do now, and I cannot bear the thought of him suffering. We will not be around to fill his food and water bowls for you, we will not be there to buy cat food for you to feed to him, we will not be able to take him to the vet for you when he is ill.
All of these things we have been doing for the past year or two whenever necessary, except for when we have been unable to, for example the time we were going without food ourselves in order to pay the rent and feed our cat. We had told you in advance of this and yet you refused to buy cat food, and when you did you did not feed your cat more than one pouch (which is one portion of two per day) each week. During this time I fed J my lunch every day and survived on just breakfast (we were already doing without dinner in order to feed our own cat) and an occasional snack.
All of these things we have been doing when it was YOUR job, YOUR responsibility, and you have been too lazy to bother to do them yourself. I am aware that you have financial difficulties like we do, or so you claim. I am also aware that you are on a higher wage than Mark, that you do not have debts in excess of 15 thousand pounds, and neither do you have to support a partner who is fully dependant on you for their survival since they have no income at all, not even benefits. With all these things in mind, I personally (and I know that there are plenty of others who agree) do not believe you have any right to claim 'ownership' of J at all, nor do you deserve him since you treat him with such disrespect and uncaring.
What I would ask of you is that you gift him to your mother. She has cared for him in her house before, she loves him very much, and she is a responsible adult who knows how to look after an animal properly and understands her duties. J would still be your cat, you would still be able to see him as often as you liked, and you would know that not only was he well loved and cared for, but he would be in a far better environment than that of scummy crewe town centre, since your mother's home is surrounded by beautiful fields and she has a large garden.
Alternately, I would like to buy J from you. I know that Mark and I cannot afford to support many more cats, and we have already undertaken to adopt Llew and Arianne from Steph whose housemate is allergic to them and cannot keep them anymore, and so I would have to find a new home for him. However I would be absolutely certain before I let him go that the home he was going to was a good one and he would be happy and well cared for, and I would make sure to check up on how he is doing by visiting him regularly. This is a far better offer than you deserve, since Mark and I have been buying most of his food for so long now that technically we should own him already anyway.
As if this weren't bad enough, when I have in the past asked you why you do not feed your cat, you have answered "It's not my first priority." Those were your exact words. No matter what the context the meaning is the same, you can make it more subtle but that is just hiding your true meaning. When you spoke those words you made me so angry I had to restrain myself from physically attacking you. I could not speak. Whatever you have told yourself or been told that has resulted in this belief, IT IS NOT TRUE. Any living thing that is dependant on you for it's survival, MUST be your first priority, NO MATTER WHAT. If it were a human child, would you neglect to provide it with food simply because you would like an extra two minutes lie in before work? If any creature, human or otherwise, is depending on you, you must provide for it whatever the circumstances, or find someone else who is able to and will. You should be going without food before your child/pet does. The health and well-being of a life that trusts you to support it must come before everything but your own survival, and if it gets to that point this life must be entrusted to someone else.
For your reference, these are the five freedoms:
1. Freedom from hunger and thirst
2. Freedom from discomfort
3. Freedom from pain, injury or disease
4. Freedom to express normal behaviour
5. Freedom from fear and distress
These are the rights of all animals, domestic and otherwise, they are the animal version of human rights. You are breaking number one.
If you read that, thanks for your patience with me, I just needed to get it off my chest. It is highly unlikely that my housemate will ever actually recieve this. Comments are welcome.