Face of Cat Waiting for Owners Who Moved Out and Are 'Never Coming Back'

Part 1 of 2

A Reddit user has gone viral after appealing for someone to offer one cat a loving home, after his owner moved out and left him behind, and the internet was quick to answer the call.

The Reddit poster, who goes by the name Zepla, was told by a woman in her apartment complex that Gizmo “had been abandoned” in February. However, he was still waiting by the door for his owner to return. The poor cat had no idea that he had been abandoned, and Zepla immediately sprang into action as she tried to build trust with Gizmo and see if he would come to her.

Zepla told Newsweek that “a cat in danger is an all hands-on deck emergency” in her eyes. She couldn’t bear the thought of him suffering in the cold outside, so she continued trying to get his attention and leaving food out for him, in the hope that he would gradually come closer.

“I found him sitting outside his owner’s back door as he’d been trained to meow at the door to come inside. Heartbreakingly, he was still there, asking to be let inside by someone who wasn’t there, who was never coming back,” Zepla said.

Gizmo the cat after he was abandoned, waiting outside his home. The animal would meow at the back door to be let back in, without realizing no one was coming. u/Zepla / Reddit

Fearing the worst for Gizmo, Zepla posted about the cat on Reddit (u/Zepla) asking for help from fellow cat lovers. Sure enough, the post went viral, and thousands of people offered to help, and one person came out to set up cat traps so they could finally get hold of Gizmo.

Gizmo continued to evade Zepla for a few nights at first, but eventually she captured him and got him to safety. However, thanks to the Reddit post gaining more than 42,000 votes in a matter of days, Zepla was inundated with offers from people who were happy to give Gizmo a loving home.

Zepla would have loved to have kept him herself, but she is relocating to Florida in a matter of weeks, and suddenly moving the cat so far away didn’t seem right.

Zepla said: “I had many people reach out offering to take him in. But as a cat owner myself, I know that there’s a lot that goes into caring for an animal, beyond the sentimentality of it all. I wanted to be certain that he would never be abandoned again.”