FELINES MAKE THE HEADLINES
Cornish cat hero, Miami miracle moggy, plus peripatetic pussies galore
PHANTOM CAT SHAVER
While the Croydon cat killer may have been shown to be a social panic ( FT341:4, FT372:2, 373:18-19, 377:23) and the Brighton cat stabber put behind bars ( FT411:27), Coventry is being stalked by a “phantom cat shaver”. Cats, particularly in the Radford and Holbrooks areas of the city, have been returning home with large patches of fur missing. Rebecca Keogh, from Holbrooks, reported that her cats, Shelby and Smudge, had been repeatedly subject to shaving incidents for over a year. After one incident Shelby came home with all the fur on his body shaved off, leaving just the hair on his legs and head. Other cats have had smaller areas shaved into their fur, sometimes cut so close to the skin that they have nicks and cuts from the shaving, while others have had their whiskers cut off. A spokesman for Cats Protection said, “The loss of whiskers impairs the cat’s sensory perception of the world… shaving and cutting the fur or whiskers can make a cat feel very stressed… it is unethical and should not be encouraged.” Previously, in 2016, there were mysterious outbreaks of cat shaving in both Devon and the Cotswolds, but no culprit was found in either case. D.Mirror, 27 May 2016; S.Mercury, 24 Oct 2021.
OI, FOUR EARS!
Midas, a four-month-old Russian Blue kitten from Ankara, Turkey, has gained almost 20,000 followers on Instagram after her owners set up an account for her. She attracted all the attention because a genetic mutation means that Midas has four ears, one normal pair, and a second just inside them. Her owner adopted Midas after the cat’s mother gave birth in a friend’s garden and she spotted the strange-looking kitten in
the litter. Described as “playful, but friendly”, Midas has had her hearing tested by a vet and apparently, despite her mutation, she can hear perfectly. D.Mirror, 17 Nov 2021.
TOILET CAT
She spotted their five-year-old cat using the toilet like a human
Natalie Forsyth, 36, of Sudbury in Suffolk, did not believe her son Archie, 13, when he denied that he was regularly using the loo without flushing it. However, she forgave him when she spotted their five-year-old cat, Rocket, perched on the toilet seat using the toilet like a human. “One night we came back and could see Rocket squatting on the loo. I think maybe he’s just copied me,” said Natalie. Metro, 13 Oct 2021.
PAW PATROL
An 83-year-old woman in Cornwall was rescued after falling down a 70ft (21m) ravine near her house due to her cat
Piran’s “quite persistent” miaowing from the edge of the drop. Alerted by the cat, emergency services found the missing woman alive in a stream at the bottom of the ravine, which had “incredibly difficult access and uneven terrain”, and were able to winch her to safety and take her to hospital by air ambulance. “Piran the cat saved the day,” said Bodmin Police. BBC News, 15 Aug 2021.
MIAMI MOGGY MIRACLE
When the Champlain Towers South apartment building in Surfside, Miami, collapsed, only a few survivors were rescued from the debris, leaving up to 150 people missing, presumed dead, among the rubble. One resident who did make it out, amazingly unscathed, was Binx the cat, who lived with a family on the ninth floor of the complex. The area around the building is home to numerous feral cats fed by volunteers, one of whom thought they recognised the lucky moggy and took it to an animal shelter; there, it was positively identified, allowing Binx to be reunited with surviving family members. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a news conference: “I’m glad that this small miracle brings some light into the lives of a hurting family today and provides a bright spot for our community in the midst of this tragedy.” cnn.com, 10 Jul 2021.
CATS REUNITED
The increasingly prevalent practice of tagging cats with microchips means that it has become easier to reunite lost cats with their owners, even after many years have elapsed.
• In Massachusetts, Margaret Kudma was reunited with her cat Mini Max six years
after he escaped from her third floor flat through a loose window screen. Kudma had made extensive efforts to track the cat down, to no avail, but after a period as a stray he had been adopted by a family in a neighbouring district and was identified when they took him to the vet for ear mite treatment.
• On Merseyside, Kelly Pomfret, 33, was reunited with her cat Simba seven years after he disappeared. He had been living with a pensioner nearby and had been taken to a rescue centre when she died. There, a scan of his chip reconnected him to his original owner.
• It took a decade for a microchip to reunite Colin Clayton and Eva Bellamy with Big Ginge after they took him on a narrowboat trip through the Midlands and he abandoned ship in Staffordshire. He was still living wild 10 years later when a local man befriended him and eventually took him to a vet.
• 12 years elapsed before Shelley Brockbank was reunited with her cat Alfie on Jersey, this time via social media. He disappeared in 2009, aged four, after going on an “adventure” and not returning. He was “well-known for climbing into people’s cars” and it is likely that such behaviour led to his disappearance. In 2021, Shelley saw a post on the Jersey Society for the Protection of Animals Facebook page and realised the cat they had taken in was the “spitting image” of Alfie. After taking him home she said she hoped he had finished with his adventures and “will settle into a cosy and peaceful retirement.”
• Another Simba staged a rather more startling return in Belfast. After their 14-year-old cat went missing, the O’Cleirigh family searched the neighbourhood and found a black cat with a white patch, identical to Simba’s, squashed in the road. They tearfully took it to the vet and paid £60 for a cremation, then bought a £25 headstone. However, that same evening, they saw Simba sauntering up the drive as if nothing had happened. “Everyone was screaming Simba had come back from the dead and we were all so happy and celebrating,” said Sinead O’Cleirigh. They were also able to track down the owner of the cremated cat on social media and return the ashes to them. [UPI] 26 Jul; Sun, 10 Sept; BBC News, 21 Sept, 18 Nov 2021; Metro, 13 Oct 2021.
• When three-year-old Dexter vanished from his home in Willenhall, West Midlands, Jo Walker, 43, could find no trace of him despite extensive searching. Then, four months later, she got a call from a vet in Andover, Hampshire, to say that he had turned up there. She suspects that Dexter had sneaked into a builder’s van when they were having work done, then got out at a service station on the M6 when it stopped there, only to later jump into another car that took him to Hampshire. The driver discovered his stowaway and took him to the vet to have his chip scanned, which reconnected him with the Walkers. After a six-hour round trip to collect him, Mrs Walker said: “He looked amazing and is in really good condition. He looks the same old cat.”
• A five-week-old kitten had a shorter, but more hair-raising, journey when he travelled from Liverpool to Staffordshire in the engine of a van. He was rescued unharmed and taken to the RSPCA, who named him Ringo and reported that he was “doing well” after his ordeal. Sun, 2 Sept; Metro, 4 Nov 2021.