A substantial new reward from a local shelter is providing incentive for the return of Willa the cat, who was stolen from her home by an Uber Eats driver in January.
It’s been two months since a delivery driver working for Uber Eats allegedly stole their cat, but a South Carolina family is determined to get their feline family member back.
Four-year-old Willa the cat was a fixture in her neighborhood, known and loved by neighbors and people taking walking tours of the area. The 17-pound Calico, with her magnificent floof and striking coat pattern, could usually be spotted lounging on the front porch of her home, where she liked to watch people going about their business.
Now Pet Helpers, a shelter in Charleston, is helping keep the story in the news and creating greater incentive for people to join the search for Willa by offering a $2,500 reward for her return, in addition to a reward the family is offering.
On Jan. 15, shortly after delivering Greek food to a home on the same street, Katy Barnes of Goose Creek, SC, allegedly scooped Willa up, carried the Calico to her SUV, and drove off.
Willa’s family, the Layfields, did not have an angle on the cat-napping from their home security cameras, but cameras belonging to neighbors and a gym about a mile away show a woman police have identified as Barnes taking Willa, then pulling over and discarding the feline’s collar and AirTag.
Despite her arrest and the footage, Barnes has refused to cooperate with police, claiming she no longer has the Calico. If she did simply release Willa, as she claims, she did it during the coldest season of the year during a deep freeze, when most of the country was seeing single-digit or sub-zero temperatures. That’s a challenge for any cat, especially a feline accustomed to an indoor life.
“I am amazed that people can be so cruel,” Liza Layfield told PITB. “Why? Why would this person take their animal and then put her out to essentially die? Why would Katy take Willa and refuse to give her back or tell us anything about her whereabouts in the face of freezing temperatures and snow? Why would she want to torture a family over a cat that is apparently no longer in her possession? We cannot understand, and it is keeping us awake at night.”
Despite the stress of the situation, the family has continued their relentless efforts to get Willa back.
Charleston police have taken the case seriously, arresting Barnes and charging her with petty larceny. They secured a search warrant for Barnes’ home, which did not turn up any signs of Willa, and they arrested her a second time, charging her with littering for disposing of the collar and AirTag and keeping her in police lockup overnight twice in two weeks.
The message: they’re not letting this go either. Neither are locals, who have rallied to support the Layfields and have started a petition asking authorities to do as much as they can to help find Willa, and calling on Uber to do more to help. Almost 1,700 people have signed the petition, and it continues to accrue signatures.
In the meantime, the Layfields have turned to their community for help. An email account they set up has yielded promising tips, and neighbors have been on the lookout for Willa in Charleston as well as in Goose Creek near Barnes’ home.
“It is very much an active and ongoing investigation,” Liza Layfield told PITB.
“We love our animals as our children, they are a part of our family, and we can’t rest until she is found.”
Orangey the Cat enjoyed a suspiciously prolific career as Hollywood’s top feline actor for almost two decades. What’s the story behind the iconic moggie?
Orangey, the cat who famously belonged to Audrey Hepburn’s character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, had an impressive and improbable film career beginning with 1951’s Rhubarb and ending with roles in TV series like Green Acres and The Flying Nun almost two decades later.
A new story in The Guardian charts Orangey’s film career and attempts to reconcile conflicting information about the famed feline. At least two cats played Orangey in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, while potentially dozens were used for Rhubarb, a comedy about a cat who inherits his wealthy late owner’s fortune and assets, including a baseball team.
“Watching the cat performances both within the movies and across the different titles certainly lends credence to the idea that Orangey was more a cat type, provided by trainer Frank Inn, than a specific animal,” The Guardian’s Jesse Hassenger writes.
Orangey had a prolific career in film and TV, one that would have been very difficult for a single cat to manage due to the number of appearances and the unlikely length of his tenure as Hollywood’s top cat.
In fact, color mattered less than resemblance because most of Orangey’s appearances were in black and white, so it’s possible Orangey wasn’t always Orange. (Later performances were filmed in color and some films were subsequently colorized.)
Using more than one cat for a role is pretty standard in Hollywood films that feature felines. Keanu, the 2016 Key and Peele comedy about an eponymous kitten who is stolen by drug dealers, cycled through several kittens as the pace of production was simply too slow compared to the rapid growth of real life kittens. In 2024’s A Quiet Place: Day One, two very similar-looking cats, Nico and Schnitzel, shared the role of Frodo, the cancer-stricken protagonist’s emotional support animal.
Why do people steal cats?
In early 2023, more than 50 cats in and around Kent, England, were abducted and returned with patches of fur shaved off.
At first people suspected the perpetrators were engaged in some bizarre form of animal cruelty — and some later copycats, for lack of a better word, across the UK may have been motivated to cause distress — but authorities later said they believe the catnappers were checking to see if the felines were spayed or neutered.
If they weren’t, those cats were kept for breeding, while the others were dropped off where they were found.
A cat shaved during spay/neuter surgery. Credit: jp_the_man/reddit
That rash of disappearances and other cases of car abductions factored into a staggering report from the Royal Kennel Club’s lost pets database: of the 25,000 pets reported missing in the UK between January 2023 and June 2024, more than 20,000 were cats.
Those cases and others are highlighted in a report from The Telegraph published on Thursday detailing the increase in reports of stolen felines. While the actual number of police reports are unknown due to discrepancies in the way such cases are classified by police, data from the Kennel Club and microchip companies, as well as anecdotes, indicate a concerning spike in cat theft even as the UK has mandated microchips for every pet cat.
Some, like the recent case involving an Amazon delivery driver, are crimes of opportunity. They’re spur-of-the-moment decisions by people who encounter cats they might want for themselves or people close to them.
Others, like the mass pet thefts in Kent, could have ties to larger organized crime operations.
And some are attempts to make a quick quid by petty thieves who count on the emotional bond between plpeople and their animals to demand ransom for the four legged family members, like one couple who abducted a woman’s cat and ransomed her for the equivalent of a few hundred dollars.
That woman, who was identified only by the pseudonym Helen in the story, said she was torn between getting her cat back and encouraging the people who took him.
“I was worried the same thing would just keep happening,” she told the newspaper. “It’s not something you want to encourage – paying to get your cat back – in case they do it again.”
The family has pleaded for the return of four-year-old Willa, but the the woman accused of taking her has not cooperated and the Calico has now been missing for two weeks.
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.
Under South Carolina law pets are considered property, and the maximum penalty for stealing someone’s beloved animal amounts to a slap on the wrist.
Another day, another story about a delivery driver stealing a cat.
This time it happened in Charleston, South Carolina, and while local police worked quickly to identify the woman behind the wheel and arrest her, the feline is still missing.
Daniel and Liza Layfield said they knew something was wrong on Jan. 15 when an AirTag attached to their cat’s collar showed she was several blocks away. After checking their own security camera footage and video captured by other cameras on the street, they saw a local food delivery driver stop her car, scoop up four-year-old Willa, then drive off with her.
The woman tossed Willa’s collar and AirTag nearby. Thankfully, police took the matter seriously and the local community helped spread the word, leading to a quick arrest.
The family is relying on help from the community to find Willa.
But there are two problems that are common to these thefts of opportunity: Willa is still missing, and the most severe charge police could lodge against the suspect is petty larceny. That’s a misdemeanor that carries light penalties (a fine and up to 30 days in county jail) on conviction. That’s not a deterrent.
We wrote about this problem just last week, when the quick recovery of a cat stolen by an Amazon delivery driver in the UK illustrated the difference a stronger law makes.
Stealing a pet in the UK can land the thief in prison for up to five years in addition to fines. Police are more likely to devote resources when the law gives them appropriate charges to file, and five years in prison would make most people think twice about impulsively stealing a family’s well-loved pet.
By contrast, most US states treat pets as property, meaning courts do not take into account their sentimental value, bond with their people, or trauma to animal and human when someone steals a pet. South Carolina is among those states: in that state’s penal code, petty larceny is a charge that applies when someone steals property worth less than $2,000.
The suspect, a DoorDash/Uber Eats driver, has not been helpful in the Layfield family’s efforts to find their feline family member. In the meantime, the family hopes a $1,000 reward will prompt someone to come forward, or that Willa turns up at a local shelter and has her microchip scanned.
“We want to find Willa, we want to know where she is. It’s going to be 20 degrees for the next several days,” Liza Layfield told the local NBC affiliate. “The idea of her being loose and on the run is horrific.”
The Layfields’ daughter holding Willa, who has been missing since she was stolen on Jan. 15 by an Uber Eats/DoorDash driver.
Your cat may mean the world to you, but in American courts she’s no different than a TV or an air fryer.
With a quick resolution to a UK cat theft that made international news, it’s become clear that our friends across the Atlantic are way ahead of us in crafting laws that protect animals.
In the US, the legal system views pets as property. You can see the vestiges of our agricultural past in the way animal-related crimes are categorized. Here in New York, they’re found in Agriculture and Markets law, not the state penal code.
The former was written to handle things like compensation for killed or stolen livestock, not to recognize the emotional damage a thief does to both the person and pet when they’re separated.
Today laws forbidding puppy mills and defining the responsibilities of municipal pounds are lumped in with legislation governing things like farm fencing and how horses may be tested for performance-enhancing drugs ahead of county fairs. It’s archaic, confusing and limits the legal consequences for mistreating pets.
Credit: Breno Cardoso/Pexels
That means the penalties for stealing someone’s beloved dog or cat amount to a slap on the wrist. Your cat may mean the world to you, but in the eyes of the court she’s worth the $175 fee for adoption and shots you paid to a shelter.
That’s also why police enforcement is a crapshoot. If someone makes off with your furry friend, you might get lucky when you find out the local sheriff loves his dogs dearly and makes sure animal-related crime is taken seriously.
Or you might get a desk sergeant who thinks you’re wasting department resources, glowers at you from behind the desk as you submit your report, and leaves it in a pile with other things he believes are beneath the dignity of real police.
It’s easy to blame the police, but their attitudes are impacted by the outdated laws and a society that hasn’t caught up. SPCA law enforcement officers are often treated like Ace Ventura with a badge, and police agencies are reluctant to devote significant resources to cases that will amount to misdemeanor charges, which can be pleaded down further in court.
Credit: Alexandros Chatzidimos/Pexels
Compare that to the West Yorkshire police, who launched an investigation when security camera footage showed an Amazon delivery driver stealing a family’s cat a week ago. Happily the feline has been reunited with her people and is back home, but neither the driver nor the company are off the hook, as the police still have an active investigation.
In the UK, courts take animal-related crimes seriously, and so do the police. That’s because of several important pieces of legislation, starting with the Animal Welfare Sentience Act of 2022.
The law finally frees cats and dogs from any remaining association with property laws. Instead they’re viewed as what they are, sentient creatures who have their own feelings. It also recognizes animals like the octopus, which can be startlingly intelligent.
That opens the door to legislation like the Pet Abduction Prevention Act of 2024, which takes into account the trauma to the human and animal victims. Both dogs and cats are likely to be deeply confused and distressed at being taken from their people, and cats in particular don’t do well when removed from their territory.
When a judge sentences a person for, say, stealing a family’s beloved senior dog, he can take into account the stress both the family and dog endured, and the disruption to their lives. When a couple breaks up and both sides fight over a cat, the judge can base a decision at least in part on what’s best for the kitty.
You can’t do that when a law says the animal in question is no more important than a toaster.
The 2024 law cited more than 2,000 dog abductions and more than 400 cat thefts in 2020, and it has legal teeth — judges have discretion to put convicted pet thieves behind bars for as many as five years.
American lawmakers should take a look at how things are done across the pond. At a time when rancorous politics and divisive ideology stains almost everything, this is an opportunity for legislators of all ideological stripes to work together, earning a win for themselves, and most importantly, for animals.
Pain In The Bud 