The article is relaying information from an authoritative group of people who are informing the article, (those who know the cat and are being interviewed for the purpose of this article) and Waymo (Who is unfamiliar with the cat besides the point that they’ve confirmed they ran it over, and did not speak to the Guardian for this article).
There is no mention of an owner from that authoritative group of people.
The letter sent out by Waymo is not an authoritative source of information for this cat, nor is it asserting that the cat does in fact have an owner. It’s just an uninformed assumption by a third party with no first hand knowledge of this cat in order to cover a base because it’s boilerplate. An owner is mentioned in it for the same purpose as the phrase “To whom it may concern”
Who told you that cat was someone’s pet?
The linked article…
There are no pets mentioned in the linked article.
“We send our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner”
Did you even read it?
Yes I read it, there is no owner mentioned in that article, and it was very obviously a stray cat.
Your quote is just an example of the fact that Waymo has a canned, boilerplate template ready to go for when they run over an animal.
Did you ask some AI to summarise the article? Because there’s no mention of it being a pet cat.
Did you read it? Or did you just ctrl+f “pet”? Because it specifically mentions the cat having an owner.
Nowhere in the article does it mention the cat having an owner, besides the statement released by Waymo.
So it doesn’t besides the point where it does.
The article is relaying information from an authoritative group of people who are informing the article, (those who know the cat and are being interviewed for the purpose of this article) and Waymo (Who is unfamiliar with the cat besides the point that they’ve confirmed they ran it over, and did not speak to the Guardian for this article).
There is no mention of an owner from that authoritative group of people.
The letter sent out by Waymo is not an authoritative source of information for this cat, nor is it asserting that the cat does in fact have an owner. It’s just an uninformed assumption by a third party with no first hand knowledge of this cat in order to cover a base because it’s boilerplate. An owner is mentioned in it for the same purpose as the phrase “To whom it may concern”
You have got to work on your media literacy.