Pet “abandonment”? How To Keep The Cat We’ve Been Taking Care Of For Years

Location: SC, USA

For context, you can scroll back on my profile and see that we’ve been dealing with this for years. It’s finally come to a head, but I’ll repeat the important details below.

A family acquaintance frequently leaves for months at a time to visit her own family and leaves her cat with us. This used to be for a week at a time, but the stretches got longer. This current stretch has been over a year. She does not leave us any money, food, litter, etc., and we never know when she’s going to return. We’re an animal family and this is her only pet. We take care of the cat’s vets visits and vaccines. The last few times she’s returned to get the cat have been heartbreaking, and we do not want to give him back this time.

What I’ve done: -called local animal shelter for advice. They told me to call animal control -animal control led me to the sheriff. -sheriff’s office said that they’ve ruled in the case of the “watcher” for times far less than 1 year. If there was an owner dispute in the moment, they told us to call animal control, but otherwise it was a matter for civil court.

Other notes: -the cat is chipped in the abandoner’s name. -the abandoner is unlikely to be able to navigate the legal system (she does not have the finances nor the support system to be able to figure out how to navigate it) -she knows where we live but doesn’t have a key -this current stint has been about 12 months, but the cat’s been with us for about 12 months in the past, along with a few stints of 6 months, 4 months, etc. The cat is about 8 years old.

Tl;dr: What should our next steps be? Are there any actions we can do now to further legitimize that we are the caretakers for this cat? Are there any laws that can help back us up (all I’ve seemed to be able to find are about pets abandoned without caretakers)? She is in communication with us now saying that she’ll be “back for him after her next trip” but gave us no date, but also she’s said this in the past and never shown up. None of us care about “keeping the peace” with this person because she’s shown herself to be unreasonable not just in this situation but in others. We’re only concerned at this point about the safety and wellbeing of this cat we love.