Pain In The Bud

Florida Woman Reunited With Lost Cat [UPDATED]

The SPCA says it has already agreed to adopt the cat to another family and won’t reunite her with her original owner.

UPDATE: Charlene High was reunited with her cat, Donna, after staff at the Humane Society were able to work out a solution between her and the New York family that was going to adopt the 5-year-old Cornish Rex.

Little Donna went missing in February when contractors were installing a wheelchair ramp in High’s home and she got spooked as so many cats do, running out of the house.

She was found on March 14 and brought to the Humane Society of Highlands County, where staff held her for the mandatory five days before listing her for adoption.

In the meantime, High — who had been calling around to local shelters, posting Donna’s photo online and looking for her in the neighborhood — saw a social media post about a cat who had been found. The staff at the Humane Society named her Karena, but she was High’s Donna, and High said she was “ecstatic” her kitty was alive.

High and Donna couldn’t be immediately reunited, however. A family from New York had filed adoption papers for Donna and were planning on driving down to Tampa to pick up the cat.

Staff at the Humane Society worked to find a solution for everyone involved.

“We had to do some backchanneling and talking to the adopters and trying to find a solution with the adopters while also talking to Ms. Charlene,” said Sara Olivero, a staffer at the Humane Society of Highlands County. “We’ve had to do a lot of shuffling, a lot of phone calls, a lot of phone tagging.”

Ultimately, Donna’s would-be adopters agreed that she should be returned home, and will adopt a kitten instead, Olivero said. Donna was spayed, given a day to recover at the shelter, and was reunited with High on Tuesday.

“Ms. Charlene felt bad. The situation was bad to begin with,” Olivero said. Thankfully the solution was satisfactory to all and “every party is happy” with the outcome.

A Fox13 Tampa Bay (WTVT) story about the situation was aired and published to the web on Monday after the resolution, but presented the story as if the dispute was ongoing in addition to including several errors of fact.

We contributed to the flow of misinformation by linking to the WTVT story 11 hours after it was published, a practice called aggregation, and added our own commentary based on the misinformation. We got burned, and the result was presenting an inaccurate and outdated account of events to our readers.

We regret the error and promise to do better in the future. We’re glad the Humane Society found a satisfactory solution in a difficult situation, and we’re glad that Donna the cat has been returned to her original home.

Purrlock Holmes and The Fowl of The Baskerville

Purrlock and Watson take a new case!

“And the turkey, it were just gone, just like that!” said the fat cat relaying his story to Purrlock in the sitting room at 221B Baker St. “The bowl was full of fresh, delicious turkey one minute, then licked clean the next. Third time this week. I’m at me wit’s end!”

Purrlock plucked a discordant note on his cello and shifted in his seat.

“It’s all perfectly obvious then, isn’t it?”

The pudgy cat looked hopeful, his primordial pouch jiggling as he leaned forward.

“It is?”

“Indeed. Your roommate Socks is known for fastidious grooming, yet he had a Klingon on his rear two hours after the turkey went missing, which means someone was using the litterbox more frequently and Socks was far less careful than normal in his haste to exit the befouled box. From the abundance of tracked litter outside the box we can deduce that another cat made use of it on several more occasions between the time it was last cleaned at 10 pm the previous evening and 10 am this morning.

“In addition, only two of the three bowls — yours and Socks’ — were licked clean, with several morsels of beef pate still left in Oreo’s bowl. Thus we can deduce Oreo ate your turkey and most of his beef pate, necessitating twice his usual trips to the litter box, accounting for the larger-than-usual mess inside, Socks’ unfortunate Klingon, and the extra tracked litter. Ergo, Oreo was your turkey thief. Next!”

Purrlockian attire.

Mr. Fuzzy stood up as Purrlock returned to plucking his cello.

“That were amazing, that was!” Fuzzy said to Watson as he shuffled out of the sitting room. “Now it’s time for me to have a little talk with me mate Oreo. Good day, Mr. Holmes, Mr. Watson!”

Watson waited until Fuzzy had descended the steps leading out from 221B Baker Street before clearing his throat.

“Forty six seconds,” he said, managing to sound impressed. “Might be a new record.”

Purrlock didn’t look up from his cello.

“Please. London’s criminals are becoming tediously predictable, Watson. If a criminal mastermind doesn’t emerge soon, I’ll have to go and rob a tin cannery myself just to alleviate this dreadful boredom!”

“Your brother Meowcroft phoned earlier. Said he had a case of national importance.”

Purrlock sighed. “Boring!”

Watson jumped onto his desk, pawing through a pile of letters and documents.

“How about this then, Purrlock? From this morning’s paper: ‘Mistmoor Gentlecat Found Dead, Witnesses ID ‘Spectral Hound’ As Culprit.'”

Purrlock played arpeggios.

“Yokels convincing themselves they saw ghostly Beagles? We can do better than that, my dear Watson.”

Tires screeched and a car horn blasted in the street below, followed by obscenities in at least three languages.

“That’s too bad,” Watson meowed, feigning disinterest. “Mistmoor’s home to one of the nation’s largest turkey farms, you know.”

Purrlock’s ears pricked up and swiveled.

“Did you say turkey? My dear Watson, when there’s turkey involved, always lead with that!”

He put down his cello and reached for his coat and hat.

“What are we waiting for, Watson? The game is apaw!”

To be continued…

Buddy Acquires Chariot From Which To Lead His Armies

Little Buddy dreams of becoming a military general.

NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat came a step closer to achieving his dream of becoming a powerful feline warlord on Saturday with the acquisition of a glorious chariot, sources confirmed.

“From this chariot, adorned in full battle dress, I shall survey the fields of conflict and lead my forces, bringing to heel all who would oppose me,” Buddy said, excitedly jumping onto his new vehicle of conveyance.

“Perish in the flames of my righteous fury!”

Sources familiar with the militant tabby cat said that after completing the HBO series Rome, his past several days have been consumed with talk of “raising fresh levies,” and constructing a campaign map out of cat food, with clumps of kibble representing legions and treats representing generals.

Warrior Bud — Buddy in his battle armor.

Several felines familiar with his thinking said he’d assembled a plan to capture and conscript the strays and ferals of his immediate neighborhood before turning toward the next realm, which is ruled by Lord Lorenz Macaro, a powerful shorthaired Chartreux.

From there, Buddy would set his sights on conquering the fabled Store of Groceries.

The aspiring warlord cat had his human take him on a test run and was surprised to see several human infants in their own chariots.

“Excuse me,” Buddy asked a young mother pushing twins. “I didn’t know human babies rode war chariots.”

The woman laughed.

“War chariot, is it?” she laughed. “May I say, you look so adorable in your own little kitty pram!”

As of press time, sources close to Buddy said the enraged tabby cat had refocused his ire on Big Buddy for lying to him and telling him a baby stroller was a war chariot.

Cats in Mighty War Chariot — “On my mark, unleash hell!”

Oh, The Horror!

Mitzy the Cat has serious piano skillz.

Mitzy the Cat has a bright future in scoring horror movies if she wants to. Check out her eerie, tension-building keyboard work here:

Her technique is far superior to Bud’s, which consists mostly of running across the keyboard to create stabs of discordant noise. If Mitzy’s horror music is a tense, slow burn, then Bud’s is a cheap jump-scare.

Perhaps Mitzy’s score could be put to use if anyone ever reboots the 1988 cat-centric horror cheese, The Uninvited. Yes, this is a real movie:

Cops Need Help Identifying Woman Who Stole Cat

A Postmates driver stole a customer’s cat while making a delivery.

Police are looking for help from the public as they try to identify a delivery driver who stole a Colorado family’s cat.

The woman is a driver for Postmates, an Uber-owned company that delivers food and other items from restaurants and shops that don’t offer their own delivery services.

Footage from a nearby surveillance camera shows the woman pulling up to the Adams County, Colorado home at 10:27 pm on March 9.

She delivers the package, then bends down and picks up the customer’s cat — an 11-month-old ginger tabby named Simba — before taking off in her white SUV.

Simba had a collar but was not microchipped, police say. Unfortunately, the suspect’s license plate number was not visible in the surveillance footage.

Unbelievably, Postmates hasn’t told detectives who the driver is. It wasn’t clear from a tersely-worded police statement whether the company has been uncooperative or it simply doesn’t have information on one of its own contractors. Neither potential explanation looks good for the company.

The Postmates app is also supposed to provide customers with basic information about their delivery drivers. It wasn’t clear why that information was apparently not available.

After police posted their plea for help identifying the alleged cat thief, several users warned of ongoing scams involving people who steal pets and demand ransom.

Simba’s case is also reminiscent of a late 2019 incident near Minneapolis in which a delivery driver stole a much-loved cat from a customer.

A doorbell camera caught the driver touching the cat and picking him up, but the angle obscured the view of the man actually stealing the cat. After months of denying to police and the cat’s owner that he stole the friendly feline, the driver finally confessed in a rambling letter to the cat’s devastated owner, admitting he tossed the cat out of his truck’s window shortly after stealing him. Because of weak animal protection laws that treat pets as property, the driver was charged only with a pair of minor misdemeanors.

In the case of the Postmates driver in Colorado, because they haven’t had any luck finding the driver, nor any identifying information from her employer, police are appealing to the public and hoping someone will recognize the woman.

They’ve released stills from the surveillance footage, as well as this description: “The woman is a Hispanic female with brown hair in a ponytail, a cloth face mask on, a gray long-sleeve shirt, black pants, and black shoes.”