. If you want to keep the stray pet, you have a few options and duties. You could simply take it into your home and start taking care of it. If you do this, you should at least put up some notices in your local newspaper, courthouse, and community to give the owner a chance to reclaim the pet. Your failure to give notice is likely to give the owner legal ammunition if the issue ever goes to court. As mentioned earlier, giving notice to the community may actually be required in some states.
Taking a pet directly off the street and taking care of it in your home has some risk. The owner of a lost pet can come forward several months or even years after you start taking care of the pet and reclaim it. (The exact timing depends on the state and city where you live). This can be painful for you if you've formed a bond with the pet, and harmful to the pet as well since a change in lifestyle may be upsetting for it.
Because it may take so long for an owner's rights to be extinguished if you just start taking care of a stray pet, the most efficient approach may be to take the pet to an animal shelter and adopt it after the holding period. The shelter will hold the pet for a few days and give the owner a chance to claim it. If the pet is not claimed, it will usually be placed for adoption.
Be sure to ask whether the animal will be put up for adoption and how long it has to hold the animal. Inform the shelter that you will be back to adopt it. There is a small risk to the animal that the shelter will decide it's not fit for adoption or will euthanize it before you come back to claim it. However, if everything goes as planned you will acquire ownership rights in the pet in as little as a few days instead of a few years.
At least once state (North Carolina) allows you to look after the pet as an agent of the shelter and adopt it after the holding period expires. This eliminates the risk that something bad will happen to the animal while waiting in the shelter. |