I Despise My Neighbor

Location: MD, USA

About a year ago, we found a sickly black and white tuxedo cat on our front porch, and he would visit us every day due to the water and cat feeders outside. We decided to take him in as we thought he was a stray, and my mom took him to the vet so he could get vaccinated, and to check and see if he was even chipped.

The vet told us that he wasn't chipped, and that he was a 13 year old male. He looked like my 13 year old tabby cat before he passed away. We kept him treated and well fed, and he grew to be super healthy for his age. He wasn't a skeleton, but due to his age, he wouldn't be able to fully regain the best body weight. His fur got so poofy, you would think that these were two completely different cats.

My mom made a FB post about our new cat, and our neighbor saw it and sent very disgusting texts to my mom about how we shouldn't be handling "her" cat, and so on. My mom didn't want to have a fight with my neighbor over her cat, so she told the situation to our vet, and we had the medical records faxed over to our neighbor's vet so she could see what was done.

Fast forward to recently, I have noticed a large number of mats in his fur, which is unfortunately common with long haired cats. My mom had originally thought that after our neighbor made a scene about us doing stuff to her cat without her permission, that she would actually start taking care of him. The mats were absolutely insane, and it is summertime. We figured to shave him down so he wouldn't be in discomfort due to the heat and the matted fur tugging on his skin. We shaved him down as best as we could, as he was moving around too much. We flipped him on his other side to try and get some more, but we spotted an open wound on that side after removing two mats, and we stopped to call the vet. I left a detailed message due to the circumstances, but I want our neighbor to surrender their cat to us because this is just getting old to me.

Is there a specific lawyer that would specialize in this kind of case? I know that animals are like a family to us, but in the eyes of the law, they could also be seen as a form of property. Any help would be appreciated.

I also have more information about our neighbor and the reasoning as to why she spewed all of those nasty messages to my mom, but I'm afraid that would compromise my anonymity more than needed.