Pain In The Bud

Review: A Quiet Place: Day One’s Frodo The Cat Steals The Show

A rare prequel that matches or exceeds the original, Day One explores relationships feline and human in a harrowing, life-or-death situation. With its Manhattan setting and post-apocalyptic vibe, the film also invites comparisons to the chaos and insanity of 9/11, when shocked survivors were just beginning to grapple with what they’d experienced.

If there’s one thing director Michael Sarnoski knows about cat people, it’s that putting a feline in danger is a reliably manipulative way to ratchet up tension.

Frodo the cat, therapy pet to Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam in A Quiet Place: Day One, is every bit the handsome co-star.

In a story about a woman and her cat trying to survive an apocalyptic event in New York City, the cat gets plenty of screen time. There are entire sequences following the little guy as he dashes away from danger (and sometimes toward it) and as he follows his feline instincts, which might not be the right instincts in a world that suddenly has its rules rewritten.

A Quiet Place: Day One is the third installment of the Quiet Place films. The first one thrilled audiences with a tight script, tense acting and a quiet/loud dynamic that made the absence of sound more sinister than sound itself.

A Quiet Place (2018) and its sequel (2020) take place about 16 months after the arrival of monstrous creatures of indeterminate origin. The aliens are blind, but that doesn’t impede their ability to rampage through human cities. They have an unearthly sensitivity to sound and can echolocate. Even a whisper can be enough to draw their attention if they’re in relatively close proximity.

We meet the Abbott family (John Krasinski, Emily Blunt and their children) some 16 months after the initial invasion, when they’re living silently on their isolated farm in upstate New York.

The audience is told nothing about where the creatures came from or what they are, and except for a short sequence in the very beginning of the sequel, we don’t see their arrival. The first two films deal exclusively with the aftermath, with scattered survivors trying to eke out an existence.

Frodo the Cat — A curious Frodo watches Quinn’s character, Eric, emerge gasping from a flooded subway station. Credit: Paramount

Day One is a different beast entirely, both from a plot perspective and through the lens of Sarnoski, who leaves his fingerprints all over the franchise and imbues the prequel with a surprisingly poignant relationship between Nyong’o’s Sam and Joseph Quinn’s Eric, a young British student who moved to New York for law school. (If you’re a fan of Stranger Things, you’ll know Quinn as Eddie Munson, the D&D-playing metalhead and stand-out character from the show’s fourth season. He also had a brief appearance in the seventh season of Game of Thrones, and will appear in the upcoming sequel to Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.)

Sam and Eric are strangers thrown together by circumstance and quickly grow close. Eric, overwhelmed by the world being turned upside down in a country he’s not yet accustomed to, needs someone to latch onto. Sam, who has isolated herself as she wastes away from cancer, finds the companionship she didn’t know she needed.

While tens of thousands of New Yorkers heed the US military’s call to head to South Street Seaport for evacuation via boats, as the Death Angels apparently cannot swim, Sam is determined to reach Patsy’s pizzeria in Harlem, where she believes the world’s last slice of their beloved thin-crust pizza awaits. Unlike the other survivors, she doesn’t have the possibility of a future if she makes it to safety.

Walking from Chinatown in lower Manhattan to Patsy’s in Harlem is a hike, about nine miles as the crow flies. It would take most people the better part of three hours to walk under normal circumstances. In an invasion, when the slightest sound can mean death, it’s an extraordinarily dangerous and long journey.

Still, being determined to get the very last slice of pizza in an apocalypse is precisely the sort of ridiculous thing I’d do, so I sympathize with Sam.

Day One — In an amusing scene early in the film, a man in a bodega tells Nyong’o’s Sam she can’t have a cat in the store — while his own shop cat lounges on the counter next to him. Bonus point for the Knicks hat. Credit: Paramount

As for Frodo, he’s one cute little dude! I appreciate the fact that Michael Sarnoski elected to have an adult cat rather than a kitten, not because I have anything against kittens, but because Frodo is a reminder that felines of all ages are beautiful, and there are plenty of Frodos in shelters.

Nico and Schnitzel, the cats who play Frodo, are great animal actors. In one scene Frodo sees Quinn emerge from a flooded subway and stops, curiosity playing across his little face. He looks at the stranger and his mouth opens ever so slightly, as if in shock. How many takes did Sarnoski need to get that?

Frodo is also a survivor. His hunting instincts kick in when he sees a rat, drawing him closer to danger, and at one point curiosity beckons him toward the ruined shell of a building where the Death Angels are apparently nesting.

Incredibly, he never meows. There are times when he freaks out and runs, as cats are known to do, but he reliably finds his way back to Sam, and he has a knack for remaining absolutely still and silent when he needs to be.

There were so many moments when I imagined myself in Sam’s shoes and Buddy in Frodo’s paws, and we’d have been dead in all of them. As I noted in my post about the “Quiet Place Challenge” trend on social media, the Budster and I would have a life expectancy of approximately 60 seconds in the film’s world. Death by Buddy would be my fate, as inescapable as his mealtime screeching.

There is also a visceral 9-11 feel to the opening sequences of the invasion, and any New Yorker old enough to remember that day will be reminded of it. It’s impossible not to with the scenes of ash-covered survivors huddled inside buildings, crowds of dead-eyed people walking away from disaster and the eerie sight of a sooty Manhattan bereft of its usual bustle and life.

There are of course plot holes in Day One, or at least unanswered questions to things that don’t seem to make sense. When the military’s helicopters sweep over Manhattan, announcing via loudspeakers that survivors should head to the ports because “the enemy cannot swim,” I wondered: did these aliens just land in Manhattan? If so, why? Surely they don’t recognize the arbitrary municipal boundaries of humanity, and the whole area is one seemingly endless metropolis.

The Death Angels are obviously sentient, but whether they’re sapient is another matter. They don’t seem to have much in the way of a sense of self-preservation, and there is no method to their madness. During the aforementioned helicopter scene, the characters watch as hundreds of Death Angels race toward lower Manhattan, drawn by the sound of the choppers and the loudspeaker. It’s impossible not to think it would be trivial to draw the lot of them with the loudest possible sound, then drop a few daisy cutters on them and call it a day.

Of course if any of that happened there would be no movie and no drama, so as with most stories like this, it’s best to let the film pull you along without stopping to over-analyze what you’re seeing.

If you’ve watched the first two films, you also know the reasons for the invasion are nebulous. The Death Angels don’t eat their kills, as Krasinski’s Lee Abbott learned, and if they’re the vanguard of a more intelligent species, doing all the dirty work before the masters arrive, well, we’ve yet to see who’s pulling the strings.

Overall, like horror master Mike Flanagan taking on a sequel to the tepid Ouiji earlier in his career, Sarnoski doesn’t view the fact that Day One is a prequel as an excuse to phone in a performance. He approaches the film with enthusiasm and energy as if it’s one of his own creations, and that’s evident in every frame. It’s a Sarnoski movie that happens to be a genre film, not the other way round.

There’s a surprising poignancy to Day One that makes it more than the sum of its parts. We’re not here to spoil anything, but if you’re a cat lover, we will say that Day One doesn’t pull an I Am Legend. You can watch the film with reassurance that Sarnoski has better tricks up his sleeve for stirring your emotions than gratuitous animal-involved violence.

It’s rare when a sequel or a prequel reaches the same heights as the original. How many of us wish franchises like Alien and The Matrix stopped at one film? Thankfully that’s not the case here. There’s life in A Quiet Place yet, and like the best science fiction, it’s a film that uses extraordinary circumstances to tell a very human story.

Perhaps the best part is the experience has made a cat lover of Nyong’o. In a short promo (below), she explains that she’s always been afraid of cats, viewing them as miniature lions.

“Now,” she says with a laugh, “somehow, I love them!”

She’s not just saying that either. After filming Day One, she adopted her own cat, Yoyo, and it takes just a glance at her Instagram page, which is festooned with photos of the orange tabby, to know that she really does love the little guy.

Would Your Cat Survive The ‘Quiet Place Challenge’?

Buddy is many things, but he’s NOT quiet. His incessant chattiness can kill my sleep and my peace and quiet, but in the world of A Quiet Place, it would kill me! Would your cat get you killed in the movie franchise’s monster-stalked reality?

As a cat lover, big time science fiction fan and appreciator of the first two A Quiet Place installments, the very first thing I thought when I saw the trailer for A Quiet Place: Day One was “I hope the cat doesn’t meow!”

My second thought? Bud and I would be so, so dead.

Dead immediately. Dead a thousand times over.

Apparently I’m not the only one, because fans have taken to social media to participate in the “Quiet Place Challenge,” which involves reenacting some of the scenes from the movie with their own cats to see if their furry overlords can stay silent.

As PITB readers know, Buddy never shuts up. He’s got something to say about everything, he often narrates his activities in real time, and he’s got an entire meowing ritual that starts at least a half hour before Food O’Clock, gaining in volume and annoyingness until a fresh bowl of turkey is placed before him. His personal patois, the Buddinese dialect, makes heavy use of trills, chirps, grunts, chuffs and sniffs to elaborate on his meows.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Quiet Place movies, they imagine a world that’s been invaded by so-called Death Angels, dread creatures of extrasolar provenance who are completely blind, but have extraordinarily sensitive hearing. The first movie, about a family surviving on their farm in upstate New York months after the initial invasion, was universally lauded for its taut script, effective tension and novel use of a quiet/loud dynamic that is a marked departure from the usual horror-thriller formula.

In A Quiet Place (2018), its 2020 sequel and the recently-released prequel, Day One, entire minutes pass soundlessly. As a viewer you can’t help but wince and tense up when a character errs and makes noise, knowing the consequences can be immediately tragic.

There’s simply no way Bud and I would survive more than five minutes, and if I had to put money on it, I’d wager we’d probably be dead within 60 seconds of the terrifying monsters showing up.

Indeed, the movie doesn’t dither: the Death Angels make planetfall at around the 12 minute mark. Mild spoilers from the beginning of the film follow:

12:31 – On Chinatown’s ruined Pell Street, within a haze of dust so thick you can’t see more than a few feet in any direction, a man shouts loudly into his smartphone, telling the person on the other end that something meteor-like had landed just a few hundred feet away. He’s pulled suddenly and violently into the smog, his scream ending as abruptly as it began. Verdict: Death by Buddy. He’d probably meow in protest at the dust and get us both killed immediately.

12:53 – A female National Guard soldier sees Nyong’o’s Sam and shouts at her to take cover. The guardswoman’s radio crackles with the panicked screams of her comrades saying the enemy is everywhere, and then she’s dispatched as quickly as the guy on the phone. Verdict: Death by Buddy. He’d almost certainly huff derisively at the soldier’s order to take cover, and we’d both be crushed underneath the foot of one of the lumbering beasts.

13:34 – Sam huddles behind a vehicle with another woman when a panicked man screams, drawing the aliens like moths to a flame. Verdict: Death by Buddy. Little dude’s default reaction when he’s scared is to run screaming and hide behind my legs. He’d draw the monsters right to us and we’d die.

13:50 – Sam wakes up inside a theater several minutes after an explosion knocked her out. She’s about to speak when Djimon Hounsou’s Henri clamps a hand over her mouth and raises a finger to his lips. Unfortunately that doesn’t work with a cat. Verdict: Death by Buddy. Attempts to get him to shut up would be fruitless, and while I’d know my only chance for survival would be to throw him like a football so the aliens track his indignant screech, I wouldn’t have the heart to do it. We’d die together.

Frodo, the feline co-star of Day One and “service cat” to Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam, is precisely the opposite. He’s a Good Boy extraordinaire, consistently calm in his mother’s arms and reliably silent when he needs to be.

Without meows to rely on, director Michael Sarnoski gets quite a performance out of Nico and Schnitzel, the two cats who play Frodo. They’re expressive felines who could teach Nicolas Cage a thing or two about how to emote with subtlety, as in one scene when Frodo sees a man emerge gasping from a flooded subway station. Frodo regards the stranger with curiosity, his little face registering surprise at the man’s sudden appearance with just the slightest twitch of his mouth and whiskers.

It’s effective and very cute, but we never forget about the incredible danger that faces Frodo and Sam as they ~~return the One Ring to Mount Doom~~ navigate the ruins of New York City amid blind predators with extraordinarily sensitive hearing.

buddyroarbanner — “LOL I got you killed, dude! Hey! Wake up! I’m hungry! Turkey time! I’ll take my evening meal on the balcony and dine al fresco this evening, okay? Big Bud? Dude?”

If Day One’s world was reality — and I’m extremely thankful it’s not — I suppose it’s possible I’d get lucky if we were in a deep subterranean level of a building for some odd reason, and if Bud decided it’s not worth disturbing his nap to investigate the ruckus above.

But the moment his belly rumbles and he starts screeching for yums, or the second he gets it into his little head that he just has to tell me his latest theory regarding entangled subatomic particles, it would all be over, for me at least. I could totally see Bud making noise, then dashing to his customary hiding place behind my legs while a “Death Angel” impales me with one of its giant claws.

What about the rest of you? Is your cat a Frodo, a Bud or another sort entirely? Would you be dead as quickly as we would be, or do you think you could survive with your furry pal?

Wash. Family Recovers Cat Stolen By Amazon Driver: ‘She Left Her Outside To Die’

After an Amazon delivery driver stole their cat from their driveway, a Washington state family went to great lengths to recover their beloved tabby — without the help of the online retail giant, which declined to put them in touch with the driver.

Feefee’s back home.

The tabby cat, who belongs to the Ishak family of Everett, Washington, has been reunited with her humans after an 11-day ordeal that started with her abduction by an Amazon Flex delivery driver on July 21 and ended with a long and determined search by her family that led to an apartment complex about six miles from their home.

“My wife and I drove around over the last three days concentrating on apartment buildings until [Thursday] when I spotted a car that matched [the driver’s],” Ray Ishak told PITB. “I have been in the car business for 26 years. I know what to look for. Perfect match, even missing the front wheel cover, just like in the [home security camera] video.

“We went to the leasing office and explained we were looking for our cat and reason to believe it might here. The office employees immediately commented that the police were there a few days ago asking about the cat. We knew then we were at the right place.”

Feefee gets a warm welcome from one of the family’s dogs. The 13-year-old tabby cat was stolen from her family’s driveway on July 21 by an Amazon delivery driver. Credit: Ray Ishak

Feefee’s back home. Credit: Ray Ishak

Feefee digs into a bowl of food after returning home. Credit: Ray Ishak

Ishak and his wife spent the next few hours searching the grounds around the apartment complex, which are covered in heavy brush. While they didn’t find Feefee, they spoke to several children playing nearby who confirmed they’d seen the missing tabby. They gave their phone number to the kids, asking them to call if they spotted Feefee again.

“Around 6 pm they called,” Ishak told PITB. “We took off and found her in very heavy brush and sticker bushes.”

The couple gave the kids rewards for their crucial help, then gently coaxed their frightened cat from out of the brush where she’d been hiding.

A video taken afterward shows a famished Feefee digging into a large bowl of food after her long ordeal. She’d clearly not been eating over the past week and since she’s been home she’s been doing little else besides sleeping and eating.

Ishak said his grandchildren, who are particularly close to Feefee, were “elated” when told she’d been found.

For the family, the reunion comes after lots of worry, stress, taking time off work to search for her — and frustration that neither Amazon nor the driver who stole Feefee helped them recover her.

“What is infuriating is the area where [Feefee was found] is right behind the building where that person’s car was parked. That cat has been out there for days with no food and multiple people have seen her on multiple days. [The Amazon driver] just let her out and could have very easily told us and we could have very easily found her days ago and all this would be put to rest.”

The driver stole Feefee from the family’s driveway after delivering a package on July 21. Footage from the Ishaks’ security cameras shows the female driver squatting down in their driveway to pet the 13-year-old cat. The motion-activated camera timed out momentarily, then was triggered a second time as the Amazon driver left with Feefee in her car.

When confronted with video evidence, Amazon admitted the driver had taken the cat and told Ishak the driver went to the police to return her. That wasn’t true: Ishak checked with the Everett police as well as the county sheriff’s office, and neither had been contacted by anyone trying to return a stolen cat.

Then the driver’s story changed. An Amazon rep told Ishak that the driver claimed Feefee had escaped and was missing.

When Amazon would not put Ishak in touch with the driver, he pleaded with them to at least point him in the right direction, suggesting the driver could make a burner email address or call from a blocked number — anything just to get a lead on where Feefee might be.

The woman refused to cooperate.

“She knew where the cat was for over a week and still refused,” Ishak fumed. “She purposely left that cat outside to basically die, while everyone online was calling us bad people for letting our cat be an indoor outdoor cat and that she is better off with that person.”

The online retail giant never gave Ishak an explanation for why one of its drivers would steal his cat, and said only that she no longer works for the company. In an email exchange with Amazon, Ishak pointed out that his family had been victimized in a crime committed by a company employee, yet Amazon was treating it like a customer service issue and protecting the driver.

In the meantime, the family was frustrated by online comments criticizing them for allowing their cat outdoors on their own property. Feefee was diagnosed with asthma years ago and benefits from fresh air, Ray Ishak said. The cat was in the family’s driveway, just a few feet from their home, when she was stolen.

“I took time off work and after a few days of pure determination looking for a needle in a sea of haystacks we found her,” Ray Ishak told PITB. “I guess we’re not so bad after all.”

Videos and photos in this post courtesy of Ray Ishak.

Amazon Driver Who Stole Family’s Cat Claims The Feline Ran Off, Amazon Offers To Compensate Family With Stuffed Animal Resembling The Cat

Feefee the cat’s family is deeply frustrated at the lack of answers about their cat and the lack of urgency by the company in trying to locate her after an Amazon delivery driver stole the 13-year-old tabby on July 21.

After a 10-day saga in which tan Amazon driver stole their cat — and Amazon did little to help recover her — a Washington family has been told the feline is gone, and has been offered stuffed animals in her stead.

Feefee the cat was taken from the Ishak family’s driveway in Everett, Washington, on July 21. Footage from a motion-activated security camera shows an Amazon delivery driver crouching in the driveway and petting Feefee, then driving off.

A representative from Amazon’s customer service department confirmed the driver took the cat, but has not helped reunite Feefee and the Ishaks beyond giving the family an email address that law enforcement can use to contact the company.

At first, an Amazon rep told Ray Ishak that the driver — who has not been named by the company — contacted law enforcement to return Feefee. However, neither the Everett Police Department nor the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office said they had any record of anyone approaching them about surrendering a cat.

Amazon response — An Amazon customer service representative told the Ishak family that the driver “contacted the police to return your cat.”

Amazon declined to put Ray Ishak in touch with the driver or to tell him the general area where the driver lives, so he might contact local law enforcement there.

The story changed on the morning of July 30, when the sheriff’s office told Ishak that the driver now says Feefee “allegedly escaped a few days ago,” Ray Ishak told PITB.

“They will not tell me where. If I could find out the vicinity I’m pretty sure I could have found the cat,” Ishak said. “I asked the sheriff’s deputies how I can find out the area and the only way is for the driver that stole the cat to tell me.

“I asked them to have her text me or call me from a blocked number or [create] a temporary email, just to tell me where it is because [the police] can’t tell me. It has to come from her and she has refused to do so so far. I fear that [Feefee’s] gone.”

PITB has reached out to Amazon and will update this post if the company responds.

In the meantime, while Amazon will not assist Ishak in trying to recover Feefee himself, a customer service representative asked the Washington man for a description of the 13-year-old tabby “so they can send me a stuffed animal that looks like her,” Ishak told PITB.

“I am serious,” he said, adding that he’s kept copies of the email correspondence with Amazon’s customer service department.

amazonishak2 — An Amazon customer service representative said the company would do “everything we can to investigate” and offered to send stuffed kittens “that look like” Feefee for the family’s grandchildren, who are close to the cat. Credit: Ray Ishak

As we wrote in our earlier post about the incident, Amazon has handled the case as if it were a dispute over a returned item or a delivery problem, even asking Ishak to rate his experience with the company’s customer support immediately after informing him they can’t give him more information. The company has not taken active measures to reunite the Ishak family with their cat, and has refused to provide any information about the driver, even vague information that could help Ishak find Feefee.

“What baffles me is that no one seems to understand that this is a CRIME and we the people who were hurt by this crime are being kept in the dark when we should be able to find her,” the family wrote in response to Amazon’s most recent reply.

The language reflects the deep frustration the family has felt over the incident and the company’s response.

“I just pray we find her alive. I am also tired of getting the brush off, generic emails and no information on our case.”

feefeecamera — An Amazon driver playing with Feefee in the Ishak family’s driveway before driving away with the cat. Credit: Ray Ishak

If the driver is telling the truth and Feefee escaped, finding her quickly is critical. The vast majority of house cats do not do well when forced to fend for themselves, and Feefee has been a member of the Ishak family for 13 years, since she was a kitten.

If the driver is not being truthful and still has the cat, there’s no way for the family to know, and no indication Amazon or law enforcement can be convinced to find out if she’s telling the truth.

As one of our readers wrote in response to our previous story, few things are more heartbreaking than someone stealing a family’s well-loved cat. The saga has been stressful for the Ishak family, and has undoubtedly taken a toll on Feefee, who was taken from the only home she’s ever known. Feefee suffers from asthma, Ray Ishak said, which is why she was allowed to spend time outdoors immediately outside the family’s home.

Ray Ishak said his family was gathered this weekend for his son’s wedding and he had to tell his grandkids, who are particularly close to Feefee, that the cat was elsewhere. That quickly backfired.

“The emotional distress for me having to lie to my grandkids that the cat is safe and fine,” Ishak told KING5, a Seattle NBC affiliate, earlier this week. “Then, watching my granddaughters cry after they found out because they heard us talk about it. It was a double whammy from every single front.”

This is not the first time a delivery driver has stolen a pet, and not the first time an Amazon driver has done so.

In 2021, a driver for Uber-owned Postmates stole an 11-month-old ginger tabby named Simba from a Colorado family’s driveway after delivering a package. Postmates was similarly reticent to help the victims, and the family was never reunited with Simba.
In 2020, a 23-year-old delivery driver stole a Minnesota woman’s cat from outside her home and repeatedly denied taking the 12-year-old tabby until, three months later, he wrote an apologetic letter admitting he nabbed her, felt guilty and tossed her out of his truck later the same day.
In 2022, an Amazon driver stole a Michigan family’s dog. The pup was returned four days later.
Earlier this year, an Amazon driver tried to steal a family’s dog after admiring the pup and telling the family he wanted a puppy of his own. The family caught the driver in the act, and the driver did not escape with the dog.
On July 3, a FedEx driver stole a French bulldog named Tori after delivering a package to her owner’s home in North Carolina. The driver, 44-year-old Kimani Joehan Marshall, left Tori in his truck as he continued making deliveries and the pooch died as temperatures pushed well into the 90s with high humidity. Marshall dumped Tori’s body by the side of a road and the family continued to post missing flyers and search for her until July 10, when police confirmed their dog was dead. Marshall remains in jail on $50,000 bail and faces a felony cruelty to animals charge as well as larceny and possession of stolen property.
Most recently, an Amazon Flex driver allegedly stole an Austin, Texas woman’s dog on July 25. The woman, with help from friends and online sleuths, tracked the driver to his home 50 miles away and was able to recover her dog after confronting the man with evidence — including video from a neighbor’s security camera — showing he’d taken the pup.

That’s not a comprehensive list, and the cases that make the news involve pet thefts caught on camera. Victims who don’t have security or doorbell cameras generally have no recourse, and thefts by delivery drivers won’t make the news unless the victims take their stories to local newspapers or TV news stations, or local reporters discover reports by checking police blotters. The latter situation is becoming increasingly unlikely as so-called “news deserts” — locales not covered by any local media — expand with every newspaper that folds and every round of newsroom layoffs.

We hope someone in Amazon management is paying attention and can help the Ishak family get Feefee back. After all, who wants Amazon drivers delivering packages to their homes if the company allows those drivers to steal from customers with impunity?

As we wrote previously, this isn’t a customer returning a sweater or complaining about a late package, and it shouldn’t be handled that way. Feefee is a living being with emotions, and she’s been part of the Ishak family for 13 years. The very least Amazon can do is have a compassionate and empowered manager call them, apologize profusely, and vow to do everything possible to reunite the family with their well-loved cat.

Top image of an Amazon delivery driver in a Prime van courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

An Amazon Driver Took A Family’s Cat, And Amazon Has Not Been Helpful

Amazon’s response not only leaves a lot to be desired, it’s also an example of precisely what not to do when an issue goes beyond a simple customer service complaint. The company missed an opportunity to respond with compassion and earn a family’s gratitude.

An Amazon delivery driver took a Washington family’s cat and drove away with her on July 21.

Since then, Amazon has admitted its driver has the cat, but has offered little more than carefully-worded customer service responses mixed with boilerplate language about valuing the family’s business and feedback.

Ray and Karin Ishak have video of the driver petting and playing with 13-year-old Feefee in the family’s driveway during the delivery. The motion-activated camera timed out, according to a report by Seattle ABC affiliate KING5-TV, but when the camera began recording again, triggered by the driver pulling away, Feefee was gone.

“The driver [was] driving away and there’s not a cat in sight. It’s pretty obvious the cat disappeared in those seconds,” Ray Ishak told the station, adding he filed a report with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.

Amazon has chosen to deal with the incident via email, as if it’s a dispute over a returned item rather than a living being who is valued as a family member by her people.

A company customer service representative told the Ishaks that the driver said she contacted the police to return Feefee, but the family called the sheriff’s office and the police in Everett, Washington, where they live, and both agencies told them they hadn’t heard from the driver or from Amazon.

The Ishaks asked Amazon if the company could at least tell them the town or city where the driver lives, figuring the driver may have contacted police there instead of the departments that have jurisdiction over their hometown. Amazon declined to provide that information.

When the Ishaks followed up with Amazon again, a customer service representative said she’d be happy to help — if the police approach Amazon. She provided an email address for law enforcement use only, said Amazon will cooperate if the police contact them, and ended the reply with a request to “vote about your experience today.”

This is an awful response by Amazon, and the company deserves any bad PR it gets as a result. The very first thing the company should have done was escalate the ticket to a manager empowered to take care of the case directly, and that manager should have picked up the phone, called the family and promised to get their cat back immediately.

If the company doesn’t have anyone in its customer care hierarchy who understands why it’s important to make that kind of judgment call, then it’s done a poor job of hiring and training its employees.

Alternately, Amazon’s known for keeping its employees on an extremely short leash — the company is notorious for watching its employees via cameras, has been fined tens of millions of dollars for “excessive surveillance” of its own workers, has forced employees to “justify” things like bathroom breaks, and operates on founder Jeff Bezos’ belief that employees are “inherently lazy” — so if the email-only response was due to strict company policy, that’s another negative that can be chalked up to a toxic corporate culture.

Treating this like a routine complaint only exacerbated the Ishak family’s stress and uncertainty regarding the fate of their beloved cat. Putting the onus on the family and the police to sort out of the problem makes things worse, and you’d think any halfway competent customer service rep would skip the “rate your service” pitch, at least until after the problem is solved and Feefee is back with her family.

Feefee with granddaughter — Ray Ishak said Feefee’s disappearance has been especially hard on his grandchildren, who love the gentle feline. Credit: Ray Ishak

It doesn’t matter how massive and successful the company is, there has to be a better way to handle issues like this without requiring even the police to approach Amazon like customers dialing a service line, or supplicants petitioning a king to turn his gaze toward a situation that normally falls beneath his notice. There’s also no recognition of the impact on Feefee, who is almost certainly confused and stressed at being separated from the only home and family she’s known for her entire life.

Lastly, Amazon missed an opportunity to respond with compassion and earn the gratitude of a family whose members are obviously very concerned about their cat. A PR win like that is worth a thousand commercials, and can earn enormous good will with customers. Instead, people will hear about how the company treats a problem like this as if a customer is returning a shirt that’s too small.

As for the Ishak family, they say they’re giving the driver the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she thought Feefee was a stray. But, as Ray Isha told KING5, it’s been made abundantly clear that Feefee is a beloved member of the family, and she needs to be returned.

“Maybe you did this out of the kindness of your heart,” Ray Ishak said. “I appreciate it, but bring me my cat back.”

Top image of Feefee as a kitten with one of Ray Ishak’s grandchildren courtesy of Ray Ishak, via KING5.