The cat is very obviously lost or thrown away, but we have reasons to suggest it’s been on its own for a while, so for now we think of it as a stray.
We’ve already posted messages with photos on all relevant boards & web communities, and checked all the lost cat messages we could find up till July. All the lost cats with vaguely similar features are already found or found dead. The only message that could be still somehow relative is a message from a concerned citizen about a seemingly pedigree cat whom they saw living on the streets not far from our neighborhood about a month ago or so. It features some blurry photos of what could be the same cat, but it’s hard to tell for sure because the quality of image is bad. Also, that person wasn’t the owner or the resquer, they were just trying to reach out to the previous owners, like we do now. They didn’t succeed.
The vet is on Monday, we have to vaccinate and do the basic medical check. Obviously, we’ll be checking for chipping, but where I live, chipping cats is still not common, even though it’s extremely cheap and is offered everywhere. So the chances are pretty low. We’ll be happy to reunite the cat with its owners if we find them or they contact us, but the chances are low, so we are mostly thinking of adoption and adapting the apartment for the cat for now.