cat collar – Pain In The Bud

It started, as these things often do these days, with an Amazon delivery driver who took a shine to a UK family’s pet feline.

Catalin Stancu, 41, was delivering a package to a home in West Yorkshire this January when he spotted a floofy tabby cat named Nora. When Nora didn’t come back inside that day and was still missing a day later, homeowner Carl Crowthers checked footage from his surveillance cameras and saw Stancu interacting with Nora before picking her up and driving off with her.

We wrote about the theft at the time, noting Amazon hadn’t changed its standard customer service response (“How much would you say your cat was worth?”) to customers traumatized by the company’s drivers stealing their beloved pets.

Crowther also hinted that he’d like to go into more detail, but didn’t want to endanger an ongoing police investigation. Now we know why.

Nora’s family contacted West Yorkshire police, who put Sgt. Cat Ryan in charge of the investigation. Ryan used information from the surveillance videos to track Stancu to his home. Around the same time Stancu, realizing footage of himself was spreading on socials and in traditional media, contacted Crowthers via Facebook to return Nora.

On Thursday, Stancu was sentenced, marking the first time a person has been successfully prosecuted using changes made by the Pet Theft Act.

That law, passed and enacted in 2024, creates a new category for pet thefts recognizing animals are not just property that can be replaced. It gives police new ways to charge people accused of stealing pets and provides judges with more options for sentencing, including up to five years in prison, fines, community service and other sentencing conditions.

It’s also a model for other countries and jurisdictions. Currently, almost every US state law lists pets as property, most under archaic agriculture and markets laws that were meant to settle disputes over farm animals. This is also a subject we’ve covered, noting the numerous advantages of modernizing animal laws so crimes involving pets are treated differently than, say, an argument between two farmers about who owns a particular cow.

Stancu admitted to driving off with Nora before his sentencing, but said despite the fact that she was wearing a collar, he thought she was a stray.

“I didn’t steal her, I took her,” he told the court.

District Judge Paul Marks gave Stancu an eight week suspended jail sentence and ordered him to pay £500 in compensation, which equals about $670 at current exchange rates. A suspended sentence is the UK equivalent of a conditional discharge in US courts, meaning Stancu must stay out of legal trouble for at least a year to avoid serving jail time.

Marks acknowledged that Stancu made efforts to return Nora once the story hit the press, but said his actions still violated the law.

“Whatever your initial motive was for taking Nora, and whatever concerns you had about Nora’s health, you should not have behaved in the way you did,” Marks told him. “Nora was a much-loved family pet and the family wanted her back… The distress they suffered for three days when they knew nothing of where Nora was, was very upsetting.”

In a statement, the family said they’d spoken to Stancu, accepted his apology, and hope the case helps people realize they’re doing more than removing “property” when they take a cat or dog. Nora, they said, is a member of their family.

“We are incredibly thankful and relieved that she was eventually returned safely to us,” the statement reads. “We hope today’s outcome sends a clear message that animals are not objects to be stolen, and that the pain caused to families by these actions is very real.”

As for Sgt. Cat Ryan, she said she was happy to catch Catalin Stancu and return a family’s beloved cat. The Pet Theft Act, she said, made it possible because such crimes are now taken more seriously under the law.

“One look at how happy the Crowther’s have been happy to have Nora home, and see how settled she is to be back, only confirms how important it was for us to achieve this outcome,” she said.

NOTE, 5/15: Stancu’s sentence included £500 in compensation to the victims and a suspended eight week jail term. Under the plea agreement, Stancu will avoid jail if he stays out of legal trouble for the next year. A previous version of this story did not note the jail sentence was suspended.

Despite an arrest, a criminal charge hanging over her head and widespread scorn from locals, a delivery driver has “refused to speak about” what she did with a Charleston family’s cat after allegedly stealing the Calico.

A story in Charleston’s Post and Courier details the herculean efforts by a family to get their cat back after 38-year-old Kathleen “Katy” Barnes allegedly stole the feline on Jan. 15, shortly after receiving a $15 tip for delivering Greek food on the same street.

When the Layfield family returned home that day, four-year-old Willa was nowhere to be found. The Layfields checked their security camera footage, which last showed Willa about 45 minutes before the family returned home but did not show her disappearance.

Since the extent of Willa’s outdoor activities involved straying no further than a few feet from the home, and mostly consisted of her sitting on the family’s front porch, the Layfields were worried and went to bed for an “uneasy” and “restless night,” per the Post Courier. When Willa’s AirTag pinged at 4 am near the Lindy Renaissance hotel about a mile away, Daniel Layfield got out of bed and rushed to the location. The device had been tossed in the street along with Willa’s collar.

The family has been relentless in tracking down information about Willa’s disappearance and getting access to surveillance camera footage from neighbors and local businesses, which is how they found footage of Barnes allegedly taking Willa (spotted on a neighbor’s cameras), then additional footage of her SUV stopping in front of the Lindy Renaissance hotel.

In video the Layfields pulled from a nearby gym’s surveillance cameras, Willa is seen on the dash of Barnes’ silver SUV. Barnes grabs her, removes the collar and AirTag, and tosses both out of the car before driving off again.

The Layfield family has also appealed to Barnes through statements to the press.

“Please let us know where she is,” Daniel Layfield said per the Post Courier, “if you have any compassion for animals and people.”

Charleston police deserve credit for taking the case seriously, going above and beyond what most departments would do in similar cases. They were able to secure a warrant to search Barnes’ home in Goose Creek, SC, but did not find Willa.

And this week they arrested Barnes for a second time, charging her with littering for disposing of Willa’s collar and AirTag, according to the Post-Courier.

It was the second time in about a week that police kept Barnes in overnight lockup, likely to send a message that they will not forget about the case. The Layfields have also enlisted the help of people who live in Barnes’ Goose Creek neighborhood, asking them to keep a lockout for the Calico, who has distinct markings.

This case is reminiscent of the theft of Feefee, a cat belonging to the Ishak family of Everett, Washington. Fefee was taken in the summer of 2024 by an Amazon Flex driver, and like the Layfields, the Ishaks had solid footage they were able to provide to the police, which led them to identify and track down the woman who took their cat.

That woman also refused to cooperate with police or tell the family what she did with their cat, despite their pleas and assurances that they weren’t interested in anything other than getting Feefee back.

Like the Layfield family, the Ishak family’s cat was well loved by the entire family, especially the kids, so Ray Ishak took the next several days off work and began driving around in an increasing radius, looking for the vehicle the Amazon contractor had been driving in the footage.

He found Feefee a few days later, scared and cowering in the bushes near the driver’s apartment. The driver had allegedly dumped the cat instead of returning her to the family, despite initially agreeing to bring her to the local police department.

In both cases, the families did everything right in their efforts to recover their four-legged family members.

They posted to social media, posted flyers, rallied support, and asked others to help spread the word. They reached out to local media, sent copies of the footage, then made themselves available for interviews and to plead for the return of their cats.

They also filed reports with the police and complained to the corporations — Amazon in the Washington case and Uber in the South Carolina case.

While Amazon is notoriously slow to respond to incidents like this and has repeatedly infuriated victims by treating the thefts as customer service issues, Uber said it contacted the driver and tried to persuade her to hand over the cat. While Barnes can’t technically be fired, as she’s a gig worker, the company said she will no longer be allowed to contract for Uber Eats.

“What’s been reported by the Layfields is extremely concerning,” Uber’s team wrote. “We removed the driver’s access to the Uber app and are working with law enforcement to support their investigation. We hope Willa is safe and reunited with her family.”

Unfortunately Willa’s been missing for two weeks now, and like most of the US, the normally temperate Charleston has been in a deep freeze, with temperatures plummeting below zero.

Because South Carolina views pets as property, as many states do, the worth of Willa’s life is pegged at a few hundred dollars at most, and she’s treated in the eyes of the law as an object.

That means the most severe charge the police could arrest Barnes for is petty larceny, a misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to 30 days in county jail and a fine, if she’s convicted.

It is important to note that despite the footage, the charges are an allegation, and Barnes remains legally innocent pending a possible conviction.

But because the charge is just a misdemeanor, there is no pressure for her to cooperate and help the family get Willa back. (Or return her, if she still has the cat in her possession.)

Historically, pet theft has been associated with two primary motivations: thieves target breed cats and dogs because they believe they can make easy money selling them, whole others use stolen pets as bait or “training” for the violently conditioned dogs used in dogfighting. Some also target pedrigree pets to breed them.

In both these cases, and others that have been in the news recently, the thefts were crimes of opportunity, not pre-planned, and the cats were moggies. In addition, the cats were spayed/neutered. That rules out monetary gain by reselling or breeding. It also stretches credibility to believe gig workers are somehow more likely to be involved in dog fighting.

This is something new, a category of theft that may have began in earnest during the COVID era, when people felt isolated and shelters were literally being emptied due to the dramatic uptick in adoptions. Unable to find a companion animal through normal channels, some people stole pets for themselves.

But the shortage was short-lived, shelters and rescues are back in the familiar situation of having too many animals, and there’s no impediment to someone simply adopting a cat or dog instead of inflicting trauma on the animal and its family.

We hope the Layfields receive good news soon, and Willa is returned to the warmth and love she’s known with them.