Enormous caveat: Judging from this article, Lyft appears to be unwilling to give even a shadow of an idea of how the cat came to be lost outside. Like everybody else, I can only assume the driver abandoned it.<p>That said: I feel out of touch, reading all the comments on Ars to the effect of "the driver should do some soul-searching". The harshest take I've seen is a single comment suggesting that they should be fired. But this is animal abuse. It is the theft (effectively, after they realized what happened) and discarding of a stranger's beloved pet. It might have never been found. It might have died. This is not even to mention the psychological damages. The driver should face jail time.<p>When I think about a person doing this, I feel hatred. I can't help it, and I don't say that lightly - I can <i>understand</i> why people do all sorts of horrific things. But this is in the realm where I can't even imagine what it is like to have the mental framework to choose this course of action (not to say that it is <i>more immoral</i> than my unspoken examples of "horrific" things - of course not - but rather that it is <i>more inexplicable</i>, i.e. <i>less human-seeming</i>). Short of some extenuating circumstance that Lyft is inexplicably withholding, I have a hard time considering this behavior as anything other than a sign of simple incompatibility with society.