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.

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.

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 understand 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 more immoral than my unspoken examples of "horrific" things - of course not - but rather that it is more inexplicable, i.e. less human-seeming). 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.