When you move from one house to another, sometimes the owner will leave a bottle of wine for you to celebrate the milestone with. Maybe, if you’re lucky, they’ll leave some furniture. Quite rarely do they leave an animal.

One family who recently moved were a bit shocked to find a pretty arbitrary note from the previous owners in their new home explaining that in purchasing this house, they were also receiving a backyard cat.

The cat, the family learned, had been born in the backyard of the home nearly 12 years ago, and has been there ever since.

“Welcome to our beloved home!” the note began. “We hope you enjoy it as much as we have! There’s one favor we ask of you, you do not have to do it, but we would appreciate it if you did.”

Well, that’s kind of an odd way to welcome someone into a new home, but let’s carry on.

“In the backyard there is an old orange kitty who lives there,” the note continued. “He is feral and was born in our backyard 12 years ago. He has an injured paw and will not let you go near him. We feed him (every day) twice a day and we have for years now.”

Man, this couldn’t have been something that was brought up when papers were being signed, closing costs were being secured?

“We immediately looked out the back sliding glass door and he was looking at us through the door,” said Miranda, the woman who bought the house and found the note.

Thankfully, Miranda and her husband found the situation hilarious. “We started laughing because we currently have five cats, all but one have been rescued,” Miranda shared. “The house we lived in previously, people used to drop off their cats there and we took them in.”

Well if that’s not the weirdest coincidence!

Clearly the previous owners were scared to mention the cat in the process of selling the home, in fear that Miranda would back out. But that was the last thing that happened. Of course Miranda took the cat in as part of their family!

She named him Raz and was determined to make him part of their family and have him warm up enough to them to trust them, and maybe even come inside once in a while.

After a while, she did eventually start to make some progress! “He used to hide anytime we came to the door. Now we can sit outside with him,” she said. “He will come up and eat now when the screen door is open, which he wouldn’t do before.”

Miranda is obviously a huge cat lover, and would do anything to help out a kitty. She wants her story to encourage people to take in stray animals and help them out.

“If you have the means to take care of an animal in need, you should,” Miranda said. “There is nothing like earning their trust and helping them live out their time comfortably and feeling loved.”

Are you a cat person? What would you do if you bought a new home and accidentally bought the backyard cat too?