Show Me The Cats!

There’s something fishy going on in this exciting short story by Liz Filleul.

I’d have loved to give a home to all these furry felines, but there was something odd about this adoption agency . . .

MY heart melted as I scrolled through the photos on CATastrophe’s Facebook page: an adorable ginger cat with white paws, a beautiful tabby kitten, a fluffy tuxedo with soulful eyes.

I wanted to adopt them all.

I skimmed through the comments beneath the photos to find out if the cats had been adopted.

No point expressing interest if they’d already found a loving home.

Most comments were along the lines of Hoping and praying someone will take care of these precious babies, and I’d love to adopt this gorgeous kitty but I have three already.

But a handful of posters wanted to adopt.

I sighed. Of course these gorgeous cats, especially the kitten, would have been snapped up straight away.

My phone rang and I grabbed it from the table. My neighbour’s name flashed across the screen.

“Hi, Molly. I’m looking at that CATastrophe

Facebook page you told me about.” I manoeuvred into a sitting position and laid my iPad beside me.

Molly was approaching eighty and struggling with the recent death of her elderly tabby, Felicity.

She’d been thinking of getting another cat, and when I’d mentioned that I, too, was interested in adopting, she suggested I check out CATastrophe, a cat rescue and adoption service in Melbourne’s outer east.

After years of working in an office tower I’d gone freelance.

I’d always wanted a cat, and now I was home all day it would be easier.

“Oh, Julia, did you see that kitten they put up for adoption last night?” Molly asked.

“She reminded me so much of Felicity.

“A few people have already offered to adopt her, otherwise I’d have taken her.”

“I’m not sure you should get a kitten, Molly,” I said carefully.

“My friend got one a couple of months ago and she says he’s underfoot all the time.”

I worried that frail Molly would tumble over a lively kitten.

“Yes, I must admit I’ve wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to get an older cat . . .”

“There are plenty on the CATastrophe page.” I resumed scrolling through the posts as rain lashed the windows.

It was late May; the weather had been dreadful since Easter, and we still had winter to get through.

It broke my heart to think of unwanted cats living on the streets in our freezing weather.

“Anyway,” Molly went on, “I didn’t call you to talk about cats.

“I wondered if you could get a few things for me next time you go to the supermarket?”

“Of course. Tell me what you want.”

Despite the age difference, Molly and I had become close since I’d moved in next door.

Her family lived overseas and I looked out for her as much as possible.

My own family were in Queensland and I suppose we’d become a surrogate mother and daughter.

I scribbled down the items she needed and we ended the call.

Over the next couple of weeks I kept a close eye on the CATastrophe Facebook page.

The cat rescue and adoption service was run by just one woman, Selina Pettigrew, who spent her evenings and weekends trapping homeless cats around the outer eastern suburbs.

She took them to her vet to be neutered and sought loving homes for them via the Facebook page.

Selina’s relentless work meant there was a steady supply of cats to adopt.

There weren’t so many kittens, but when a couple – one black, one ginger – appeared on the page, I posted quickly, offering to adopt them.

Someone called Laurie Evans posted beneath my comment telling me to send a private message to the page, so my offer wouldn’t get lost among the deluge of posts.

So I messaged the page and waited for a response, already picturing my home with a kitten running around it.

A few days later, I’d still heard nothing.

In fact, the little profile icon that indicated when a message had been “seen” never appeared beside my message.

Still, I wasn’t the only person interested in adoption, I reminded myself. Someone had obviously got in quicker.

I wasn’t the only disappointed cat lover.

Molly had finally decided to adopt an older cat and had put in a couple of offers of adoption.

She’d messaged the page as instructed, but had also received no response.

“Maybe I should get a mother cat with kittens and you can take the kittens when they’re old enough to leave her,” she suggested when we met for coffee one morning at our local café.

No-one spotting us at the table nearest the fire would have mistaken us for relatives.

Molly was tiny, dyed her short hair bright red and was trim from daily walks.

I was tall, my shoulderlength hair was salt and pepper and I’d put on weight, given working from home meant close proximity to my pantry and fridge, not to mention the local bakery.

“I only want one kitten!” I protested. “Kittens are hard work.”

“It’s less work having two. They’re company for one another.”

“Double trouble, you mean!”

“Oh, if you were to see two kittens together, you wouldn’t have the heart to separate them,” she insisted.

“That’s why I only look for photos of one kitten!”

A couple of mornings later, when I checked the CATastrophe Facebook page, Selina Pettigrew had posted a different plea.

As you know, I spend all my spare time trying to help unwanted street cats.

When I’ve trapped them, I have them neutered so that they won’t bring more unwanted kitties into the world.

Sometimes they need other surgery, too – see the photo of Billy, who’d been in a fight – and I always get them microchipped, vaccinated, flea-treated and wormed before seeking homes for them.

I now owe my vet $10,000 and I don’t have any money left to pay this bill.

If you can help, please message me so I can give you the banking details for my vet.

Without your support, I can’t keep going and there will be no-one to help these poor babies.

A number of people had posted comments beneath the accompanying photo of Billy, an elderly white cat missing an eye.

Some promised to be in touch after they next got paid, but several – including Molly – posted saying they still had the vet’s details from the last time Selina had struggled to pay her bills, and were about to make donations.

Well, I was struggling a bit financially while waiting for the freelancing to take off.

But if Molly could be generous on a pension, I could afford to donate as well.

I messaged the page, asking for details of the vet’s bank account.

Within minutes I received a response with Waratah Road Vet Clinic’s banking details, telling me to make it clear that it was for Selina Pettigrew’s account and thanking me in advance for my generosity.

Well, that was a quick reply, I thought. My messages about adopting kittens hadn’t even been “seen” yet.

Still, CATastrophe probably received way more messages from people wanting to adopt than from those willing to donate money.

I was about to exit Facebook to go into my bank account when a new post appeared on CATastrophe’s page.

A lovely tortoiseshell kitten gazed up at me from the screen.

Meet Clover, a gorgeous twelve-week-old kitten I rescued from the mean streets. She’s friendly, playful, neutered, vaccinated and wormed and is waiting for someone to give her a home.

I still had Messenger open and could tell from the green dot beside CATastrophe’s name that Selina was online and dealing with messages.

I typed a quick message, thinking here was a chance for my offer of adoption to be seen straight away.

But even though the little profile photo icon appeared beside my message, indicating it had been seen, I received no response.

I scrolled through the

Facebook page to see how many other people wanted to adopt Clover.

Three or four other would-be adopters had been directed by Laurie Evans to message the page.

One of the posters, Holly Wentworth, claimed that she’d sent several messages but had received no response.

Another, Fiona Bianchi, responded to Holly saying Selina never replied.

I sat up a little straighter. Selina had responded immediately to my message about helping her pay the vet’s bill.

Did she really never respond to people who wanted to adopt a cat?

I scrolled through several posts and discovered that Selina not responding was a common complaint.

Feeling guilty about the amount of work time I’d already wasted online, I closed Facebook and headed for my studio.

I’d been commissioned to illustrate a children’s fantasy book, but even fire-breathing dragons couldn’t take my mind off why Selina answered queries about donations instantly but ignored those about adoptions.

In the end, I returned to my iPad and messaged Fiona Bianchi.

Hi, Fiona. Sorry to bother you, but I’m intrigued by something you said on the

CATastrophe page.

I’m keen to adopt a kitten from CATastrophe but Selina doesn’t respond to my messages.

What did you mean by “Selina never replies”? Am I wasting my time trying to adopt from this rescue?

Fiona replied 10 minutes later.

Hi, Julia, I literally mean Selina never replies. I really wanted a cat who reminded me of the one I had as a child, but Selina never got back to me.

I ended up adopting from another rescue. If you look through all the posts, you’ll

Did she really never respond to people who wanted to adopt a cat?

see that a lot of people say they have never had a reply.

I thanked Fiona and began examining CATastrophe’s posts, going back much further than I had before. Soon I spotted a pattern.

Several weeks of pictures of cute or injured cats up for adoption were punctuated by pleas for donations to the vet to help pay off Selina’s spiralling debt.

I couldn’t find any follow-up posts stating that a cat had been adopted.

Questions by page followers about whether a specific cat had found a home were always ignored.

Anyone asking for updates was told by Laurie Evans that Selina worked full time and spent every spare hour rescuing cats so didn’t have time to respond to every message or comment.

I clicked on to Laurie Evans’s Facebook page. It had a profile photo of a ginger tabby and a cover photo of three kittens on a bookshelf.

But the privacy settings meant I couldn’t find out if Laurie was a friend of Selina’s, or anything about her at all.

Could Selina Pettigrew be running some kind of scam, I wondered.

If so, she was scamming people like

Molly, who could ill afford to donate to something that wasn’t real.

That Selina Pettigrew might be taking advantage of the kindness of Molly and dozens of other cat lovers made me fume.

If this was a scam, I was going to expose it.

“So,” I muttered, “the first step is to find out if these cats Selina puts up for adoption actually exist.”

They existed, all right. But not necessarily in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs.

By copying photographs, uploading them to Google images and searching for matching photos, I found several on other Facebook cat rescue pages, based not only in other cities in Australia, but even on the other side of the world. I called Molly.

“How did you come across the CATastrophe Facebook page? Did someone recommend it?”

“Oh, I can’t remember,” Molly replied. “I follow a lot of animal charities on Facebook.” Her voice rose in excitement.

“Are you adopting one of their kittens?”

“If only,” I said. “Selina never replies to messages. Well, except when I message her about donating, that is.”

“You sound very cynical all of a sudden.”

“I wonder if it’s a scam,” I admitted. “So many people donate money to them. It’s easy to suck people in with a cute photo and a sob story.

“There are thousands of photos of cats available online. It’s easy to copy and paste them,” I added.

“Yes, but the money goes to a vet, doesn’t it?” Molly pointed out. “Not to Selina. So it must be legitimate, mustn’t it?”

“Maybe,” I said, typing Waratah Road Vet Clinic into the search engine.

“The vet is certainly legitimate,” I said, clicking through to the website.

The clinic had an address in the outer eastern suburb of Boronia and the home page displayed a photo of a grey brick building with large windows and signs advertising Puppy School and Parking At Rear.

There were also photos of two vets: a woman called Carolyn Lumsden who had stylish grey hair and looked in her fifties, and a darkhaired bespectacled man called Ron Lowe, who looked mid-thirties.

“The banking details may not be for the vet, though. The money could be going straight into Selina Pettigrew’s account.”

“You’re on the wrong track there, Julia,” Molly replied.

“I’ve made out cheques to Waratah Road Vet Clinic, not to Selina or the cat rescue.”

“Oh.” That seemed to clinch its legitimacy, but something still felt wrong to me.

“I think you should hold off on sending another cheque until I’ve investigated a bit more.”

We ended the call and I Googled “Selina Pettigrew”.

Just like Laurie’s, Selina’s personal Facebook account was locked down, so all I could see were her profile and cover photos which were, predictably, of cats.

I found her on LinkedIn, though, working as a book-keeper for an accountant in the outereastern suburb of Croydon, and there was a photo of her.

She looked around thirty, and had long blonde hair.

Did she really spend her evenings trapping cats, taking them to the vet and having them microchipped, neutered, vaccinated and all the other things she claimed on her page?

There was only one way to find out.

A couple of days later, Molly and I were in my car outside the accountant’s office in Croydon, waiting for Selina to leave work.

“What if she catches public transport home?” Molly asked.

I grinned.

“Then you stay here and I follow her.”

“I hope she has her own car then,” Molly said. “I don’t want to miss out on the fun.”

Molly needn’t have worried. At ten past five a blonde woman left the accountants and got into a zippy-looking red sports car just up the road from where we were parked.

Fortunately the traffic was heavy, so my old car easily kept up with Selina’s as she drove along a busy street flanked by sprawling industrial estates.

Finally, she turned off the congested road and into a quiet, winding street.

“She’s going to the vet’s!’ I exclaimed, recognising the grey building.

I followed Selina to the car park behind the veterinary clinic and parked three spaces up.

I wound down the window so the windscreen wouldn’t fog up.

Presently, a man with a dog left the vet’s, followed by a schoolgirl carrying a covered cage.

A man I recognised as Ron Lowe left the building. He waved at Selina and eyed us curiously before jumping into his car and driving away.

Just my car and Selina’s remained in the car park.

At last the woman I recognised as Carolyn Lumsden came out.

She was on crutches and checked the door was locked before hobbling towards Selina’s car.

Selina jumped out of her car.

“Need a hand, Mum?” “No, I can manage,” Carolyn returned, making her way round to the passenger side.

Molly and I exchanged triumphant grins.

“Mother and daughter,” Molly whispered. “Who’d have thought it?”

She raised her voice as Selina began reversing out of the car space.

“Follow that car!” She chuckled. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

This time the drive was faster, but fortunately a little shorter.

Selina pulled into a car port outside a doublestorey weatherboard house about five minutes away from the veterinary clinic.

I took a photo of the car and of Selina and her mother as they walked up the drive.

We remained parked outside. No-one came out.

About half an hour later a photo appeared on CATastrophe of two cats Selina had supposedly just rescued from the streets.

“Nice little scam,” I remarked. “Daughter pretending to rescue street cats, mother pretending to treat them.

“People donating money towards bills that don’t exist.

“Molly, it’s time to talk to the police.”

Two months later Carolyn Lumsden and Selina Pettigrew were fined $10,000 each at the magistrates’ court.

They were also ordered to repay the substantial donations they’d conned out of people over the past few months.

Laurie Evans, as I’d guessed, was a fake account set up by Selina so she could defend herself from criticism and point people towards sending private messages, so it looked like adoptions were happening.

According to newspaper reports, Selina had lost her job at the accountants and Carolyn planned to “retire” from veterinary practice.

“Serves them right,” I said, passing the newspaper to Molly.

Between their arrest and now, Molly and I had both adopted pets from another rescue agency – a legitimate one this time, which really did rescue cats, and never asked for donations, other than food.

Molly had adopted an eight-year-old tuxedo who was happy to sit on her lap all day and purr.

I’d adopted two very lively tabby kittens – two little girls who got under my feet, on to my keyboard and into loads of mischief.

Molly was right. When I’d seen the sisters together, I hadn’t had the heart to separate them.

They really were double trouble, so I was right, too!

The End.