stolen cat – Page 2 – Pain In The Bud

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.

Jury Awards Oregon Man $1.4 Million In Stolen Cat Case

The man’s attorney styled the decision as a victory for animal lovers.

An Oregon man didn’t get his cat back but he could be almost $1.4 million richer after a jury decided in his favor in a cat-napping case.

Joshua Smith, 41, adopted a cat he named Frank in 2017 after finding the little guy, apparently a stray, in an alley.

At the time Smith was living in a single room in a group drug recovery home in Portland, according to the Oregonian. The terms of his lease didn’t allow him to keep pets so when Smith’s landlord — a man named Devon Andrade — discovered Smith had been keeping a cat, Andrade took matters into his own hands and stole Frank, admitting under oath he’d taken the tabby and given it to his girlfriend, who then took Frank to a local shelter.

Smith and Frank were never reunited: It turns out Frank has a microchip and he was returned to his original family, the people who were his caretakers before he went missing and Smith discovered him more than six years ago.

Frank the cat, as seen in a photo Fuller showed to the jury.

But it took a jury less than two hours to decide against Andrade and Pine Street LLC, the company behind Pine Street Recovery Housing. The defense argued that even though Andrade should not have acted unilaterally, Smith was still in violation of his lease agreement, but the jurors weren’t buying it.

“The jury’s message should be loud and clear to landlords,” said Michael Fuller, Smith’s lawyer. “You need to respect the rights of tenants, especially when it comes to pets.”

The jury awarded Smith a shocking $1.375 million although it’s not clear how much of that Smith will see. An earlier story, published in 2019, said Smith had sought $250,000 in damages. It’s not clear why the jury went with the much larger amount.

Fuller credits the jury, saying there were several sympathetic animal lovers in the juror box.

Smith said he’s been successfully sober for years. He’s since married, moved to California and opened his own barber shop.

“The most important thing was that I got my day in court,” Smith said. “I got really lucky because I told the truth, no matter what.”

Help Track Down This Cat Thief And Return Kitty To Her Loving Family

A Nebraska family is heartbroken after a woman stole their cat right off their porch in broad daylight.

Mr. Kitty was taken under duress, and her absence has left a cold spot on her human’s bed — and in her family’s hearts.

Despite her name, Mr. Kitty is a female calico Manx rescued about eight years ago by Benjamin Strimple, who found Kitty with her leg caught in a racoon trap.

“When we got this cat, it just became my everything,” Strimple said. “Became like my best friend. Every single night I sleep with her.”

Now he’s worried for her safety and hoping for her return after his Ring doorbell caught a woman walking directly up to his porch in Omaha, NE, and taking the unwilling Mr. Kitty by force in broad daylight on Oct. 20.

The video shows the woman approach and hold out a hand. The friendly cat sniffs her hand at first, but pulls away as she leans forward. Mr. Kitty fights back as the woman tries to corral her, but a close look at the video shows the woman using what appears to be some sort of spray device before picking the cat up with both hands.

mrkittyringscreenshot — A screen shot of the Ring doorbell footage showing the suspect stealing Mr. Kitty from her family’s Omaha, NE, porch.Click here to view the video.

She carries Mr. Kitty back to a silver Chevy Malibu and drives away. The suspect is a black female with long hair who was wearing an orange skirt, a brown or black shirt and dark sneakers in the footage. Strimple says he doesn’t know the woman but she looks familiar and he may have seen her in the neighborhood before.

Mr. Kitty does not venture off his property, he said, and spends most of her time indoors or on the family’s porch, where neighbors are accustomed to seeing her.

“I feel like it was like their plans. You know, they seen my cat,” he told KETV Omaha, an ABC affiliate. “I’m pretty sure everyone on the street knows that cat belongs to this house.”

Omaha Crime Stoppers and the Nebraska Humane Society are offering a $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of the woman and the return of Mr. Kitty. Anyone with information on the theft can contact Omaha Crime Stoppers at 402-444-STOP or www.omahacrimestoppers.org. If you know anyone in the Omaha area, please share the story and encourage them to share it on social media.

The theft is not only traumatic for the family, but for Mr. Kitty too, pointed out Nebraska Humane Society’s Pam Wiese.

“I’m sure that [s]he’s probably like, what? What just happened?” Wiese said. “I was just loving up on someone and now I’m no longer home.”

Strimple said the only thing he cares about is getting his furry friend back.

“There’s a lot I want to say, but I would just say, just give her back,” Strimple said. “You know, that’s pretty messed up. We have a lot of family, a whole family sad. Just give her back.”

Redditor’s Girlfriend Stole And Abandoned Cat After Argument

Studies have shown that when people who have pets are victims of domestic abuse, the pets often become victims too.

A Redditor says her beloved cat, Midnight, is missing after her girlfriend stole the innocent kitty and dropped her off on a random road on Friday as a revenge tactic for an argument the couple had the night before.

Midnight is still missing. Midnight’s owner, using a burner account called Throwaway29374639, updated concerned Redditors and said she was putting up flyers, setting up humane traps and looking in the area where her girlfriend claims she abandoned the cat as she was en route to work.

For her part, the Redditor says her girlfriend admitted what she did and “said she just had a moment of rage, but I just can’t even look at her right now. I kicked her out of my apartment and have been crying in my room for the last few hours. I feel so lost without my cat.”

In the thread, which attracted more than 1,400 comments and tens of thousands of views, many people advised her to report her (now presumably ex) girlfriend to the police, as well as to change the locks to her home and any passwords the two might have shared on various accounts.

We’ve talked before about the strange phenomenon of people who take their anger out on the pets of their partners or ex-partners. Studies have found that men are more likely to do so, and they’re much more likely to target cats than dogs because they see cats as an extension of femininity. In cases where domestic abuse is expanded to include a dog or a cat, the abusers view the pets as proxies for their victims.

But as recent stories have indicated, women sometimes take their anger out on pets as well.

anonymous woman browsing smartphone while sitting on bed near cute cat — When woman are abused by their partners, their pets are often abused as well because they’re seen as proxies for the victims. Credit: Sam Lion/Pexels

Regardless, studies show that the pets of domestic abuse victims are likely to suffer at the hands of their owners’ abusers, and statistics show women who check into domestic violence shelters report their pets were also abused in the majority of cases. Some studies found more than 80 percent of pets who belong to domestic violence victims also become victims.

Women who worry about what will happen to their pets are less likely to leave their abusers and seek temporarily relief at shelters. As a result, some shelters also make arrangements for the pets of abuse victims, giving them safe shelter and taking another worry off the minds of their caretakers.

The links between pet abuse and domestic abuse are in addition to the well-established link between harming animals and “graduating” to harming humans, illustrated most recently by the documented history of feline abuse by the shooters allegedly responsible for massacres in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.

Top image via Pexels and depicts a random cat, not the victim’s cat.

Help Catch This Portland Cat Thief And Get Kitty Returned To His Family

New videos show the entire sequence of events when a woman stole a family’s cat right off their front porch on Sunday morning.

We’re putting out a call to our readers and all cat lovers to help identify a woman who brazenly snatched a family’s cat off their front porch in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday.

The woman was wearing a pink jacket with a white scarf, black jogging pants, white sneakers and green socks.

Cat thief suspect — The thief was caught snatching KiKi off his family’s front porch on Feb. 20.

Home security footage shows that at 7 a.m. on Feb. 20, the woman approached the Autar family’s home and tried to get their cat, KiKi, to approach her. KiKi wasn’t having it and turned toward the front door several times, refusing to approach the woman, but she slowly made her way onto the porch and snatched the well-loved kitty.

It’s clear from the way she holds KiKi that she’s not familiar with cats: Footage shows her holding him by the scruff of the neck, which is extremely painful for adult cats. Here’s a video of the entire sequence courtesy of Karina Autar:

And here’s a video from a second camera overlooking the driveway. The thief is clearly holding poor KiKi by the scruff with one hand as she briskly walks off:

The woman leaves in what looks like a black or dark blue Chevy suburban, quickly fleeing the neighborhood with the trunk still open. The SUV did not have a front license plate:

Earlier footage shows the same woman on a bicycle stopping in front of cars on the block and checking their doors. It appears she tossed the bike in the back of the SUV and drove off quickly, perhaps after someone spotted her.

Anyone who recognizes the woman or has information about the theft can call the Portland Police Department’s non-emergency number at 503-823-3333 or email Karina Autar directly.