Snitch Is Found Alive Fourteen Years after His Disappearance but His Old Owner Refuses to Take Him Back in Spite of the Shameful Neglect Shown Him by His New Caretaker

A Young Snitch with Rachel Wells Before His Disappearance

"He gets fed fish and chips every day by the museum. He couldn't have asked for better than that. Roger (Colbourne) has had him a lot longer than I have and he is well loved."

-- Rachel Wells          

(Updated with new developments on October 19, 2020.)  

            

Just as the misadventures that seem to always befall cats never cease to amaze, so too does the perfidy exhibited by their owners. Take for instance the trials and tribulations of a handsome brown and white tom named Snitch who went out to play one day way back in 2003 but inexplicably never returned to the home that he shared with then nineteen-year-old Rachel Wells who at that time was residing at an undisclosed location in the West Midlands. He seemingly had vanished into thin air. 

"He was just over a year old when he went wandering. We (she and her unidentified partner) never knew what happened to him," she related to the Daily Mail on January 20, 2017. (See "Cat Owner Who Lost Her Pet Fourteen Years Ago and Gave Up Hope of Ever Finding Him Again Is Astonished to Discover He Is Alive -- and Says the Contented Feline Can Remain in His New Home.") "We were gutted." 

Although she claims to have devoted months to putting up Lost Cat posters on lampposts and to shoving countless others underneath doors, "she never heard anything back." His abrupt disappearance also marked the severing of at least one of her childhood ties to Joanne Rowling's Harry Potter series in that she had named him in honor of the Golden Snitch, one of the three balls that the witches and wizards improvised in order to play Quidditch while airborne on their broomsticks. 

Without any hard evidence to rely upon, she just assumed that he either had been killed by a hit-and-run motorist or simply had done a runner. Considering the gargantuan number of cats that motorists mow down each year, all of them intentionally, her first thought was indeed a real possibility. (See Cat Defender posts of August 14, 2019 and August 8, 2019 entitled, respectively, "No Respect for Life: Early Graves and Crippling Injuries Are All That Cats Who Dare to Set Foot in the Street Can Expect from the Bloodthirsty Motoring Public" and "Hounded Down and Nearly Killed by a Hit-and-Run Motorist, Eli Desperately Needs Additional Surgeries in Order to Restore His Previous Level of Mobility.") 

Her second explanation is highly improbable in that cats seldom, if ever, desert loving homes where they are well-cared for and receive plenty to eat. The most logical reason therefore that they do not return home is that they have been prevented from doing so by either other animals or humans.

For instance, dogs, birds of prey, coyotes, raccoons, foxes, skunks, fishers, snakes, and other animals are skilled and prodigious cat killers. It is humans, however, and in particular Animal Control officers, shelters, cops, PETA, ornithologists, wildlife biologists, veterinarians, and other assorted despisers of the species that kill far and away the most cats.

Despite the enormity of her loss, life had to go on for Wells and she sometime thereafter changed houses and began a career as a veterinary nurse at White Cross Vets in Wolverhampton, twenty-seven kilometers northwest of Birmingham in the West Midlands. She was never quite able, however, to get Snitch out of her mind.

She accordingly decided to maintain in place an expedient just in case he were ever found to be still alive. "...working as a veterinary nurse means I've seen a number of pets reunited with their owners after long periods of time so I never gave up hope and each time I moved house I always updated my contact details on his microchip, on the off-chance he ever turned up," she disclosed to the Black Country Living Museum in its January 21, 2017 press release that is posted on both its web site as well as its Facebook page. (See "Long-Lost Cat Discovered 'Living in the Past' at (the) Black Country Living Museum.") 

It took an awfully long time for her fidelity and due diligence to pay off but when they did the dividend was huge. In early January of 2017, some fourteen years after he had disappeared from her life, Snitch miraculously turned up at an undisclosed surgery in the West Midlands where the microchip that Wells had implanted in him fifteen years earlier was discovered and deciphered.

"Gobsmacked" is how that she described her reaction after having been contacted by the veterinary office and informed that her long-lost Snitch had indeed been found alive.

As she soon learned, he had been frequenting the Black Country Living Museum (BCLM) in Dudley, ten kilometers southeast of Wolverhampton, ever since either 2005 or 2007; there is a discrepancy in press reports. According to the account in the Daily Mail, however, Snitch has been visiting the museum ever since 2005 where he is sometimes fed by now seventy-three-year-old maintenance man Roger Colbourne. 

As the story goes, Colbourne was working in the carpenter's shop when he discovered Snitch hiding underneath some wood. "I gave him some of my lunch and he never stopped coming back," he told the Daily Mail. 

It never has been explained where Snitch had been living between his disappearance in 2003 and his turning up at the BCLM in either 2005 or 2007. For its part, the Daily Mail claims that he had been sleeping rough but that seems unlikely.

A much more plausible explanation is that he had been kidnapped by someone who in turn had locked him up indoors for a lengthy period of time before growing weary of his company and then dumping him back in the street. By that time, he most likely either had forgotten all about Wells and where she lived or she already had changed houses.

After all, stealing and subsequently dumping domesticated cats happens all the time. (See Cat Defender posts of February 8, 2017 and January 29, 2020 entitled, respectively, "The Long and Hopelessly Frustrating Search for the Kidnapped Mr.Cheeky Ends Tragically Underneath the Wheels of a Hit-and-Run Motorist" and "Brazenly Abducted from His Home in Broad Daylight by an Auto Parts Delivery Man and Then Allegedly Dumped, Dot Is Nowhere to Be Found Almost Four Months after the Fact.")

That argument is supported not only by the fact that Wells, supposedly, searched long and hard for Snitch but also given that the museum is located slightly less than five kilometers from the home that she once shared with him. Nevertheless, it is odd to say the least that she never once ran into him over the course of the intervening fourteen years given that she is reputed to be a regular visitor to the museum. 

Apparently even she has had a difficult time wrapping her mind around that petit fait. "When he finally reappeared after all these years I couldn't believe it and especially because he's now living so close to me," she told the BCLM.

Kidnappings of this sort, if that is indeed what transpired, would appear to be spur-of-the-moment, opportunistic crimes that are perpetrated by individuals who are too cheap to visit shelters and thus to ransom cats off of death row. Not surprisingly, they also quite often turn out to be disastrous for the victims themselves because caring for a cat requires a considerably lengthier commitment and a far more substantial expenditure of funds than their abductors are usually willing to make. That, by the way, is the major reason that disposing of unwanted cats and kittens through the expediency of "Free to a Good Home" advertisements is not a good idea.

As for Colbourne, his intellectual curiosity is limited to wallowing in the sottise that Snitch had joined the underworld as the fictional Gipsy had done in Booth Tarkington's 1916 novel, Penrod and Sam. "Still, we can't help but feel duped," he complained to the BCLM. "I thought someone had abandoned him when the truth was he had run away from a perfectly good home and loving owner."

Whereas anyone who ever had truly loved a cat would have been thrilled to have learned that he was still alive fourteen years later and accordingly would have insisted upon immediately collecting him and bringing him home, that was anything but the case with Wells. "He gets fed fish and chips every day by the museum. He couldn't have asked for better than that," is how that she explained surrendering custody of him to the Daily Mail. "Roger has had him a lot longer than I have and he is well loved."

Although she very well could have been sincere when she uttered those sentiments, that does not in any way alter the salient conclusion that altruism is extremely rare. Au contraire, the vast majority of people are extremely possessive, selfish and, especially, uncaring. 

Secondly, fourteen years is a very long time to have been separated from a cat and a lot of things can change during such an interim. In Wells' case, she now has a career, possibly other cats and, most decidedly, her feelings for Snitch have definitely waned with the passage of time.

For example, earlier this spring Amy Davies of Rochdale in Greater Manchester categorically refused to even consider taking back her long-lost seventeen-year-old cat Georgie after she had been found to still be alive and living in the Scottish Highlands. Her professed reason for not doing so was the presence of another cat at home but the circumstances surrounding Georgie's disappearance and subsequent events led to the inescapable conclusion that she never had cared very much for her from the start. (See Cat Defender post of September 8, 2020 entitled "Cruelly and Heartlessly Abandoned in the Godforsaken Scottish Highlands a Dozen Years Ago, Georgie Is Amazingly Found to Be Still Live but Her Former Owner Does Not Want Any Part of Her.") 

Just as Davies attempted to justify her shunning of Georgie on the grounds that she was only doing what was best for her, Wells was years ahead of her in doing likewise with Snitch. "It's a huge relief to know that he's safe, well and is being so well looked after by Roger and the Black Country Living Museum," she fabled to the museum in the press release cited supra.

Since Wells did not want any part of him, Colbourne was more than willing to continue his relationship with the cat that he has renamed as Tiger. "I was astounded to learn about Tiger's past," he told the museum. "I have grown extremely close to him over the years and can't imagine life without his companionship."

Facts concerning Snitch's new life are in short supply but what little anecdotal evidence there is in the public domain casts considerable doubt upon the veracity of both Wells' and Colbourne's versions of the quality of care that he is receiving from his new caretaker and the BCLM. Most pressing of all is the question of where does Snitch live and it apparently is not at the museum. 

"The pair (Snitch and Colbourne) have been inseparable ever since (the former's arrival) and Roger has been feeding him every day for over a decade with Tiger waiting for him at the gates each morning," the museum stated in its press release.

Snitch with Rachel Wells and Roger Colbourne in 2017

                             

For the uninitiated, the BCLM is an open-air attraction that celebrates three hundred years of England's numerous contributions to the Industrial Revolution. As such, it consists of forty reconstructed shops, houses, and industrial sites that are spread out over twenty-six acres. For instance, there is, inter alia, a boat dock, an exhibition devoted to the development of steam power, and an Edwardian school.

With so many buildings and acreage at its disposal, the museum surely could find some place for Snitch to hang his hat but apparently that is not the case. That in turn leads to the strong suspicion that he has either a guardian outside the museum or is still homeless.

If the latter should indeed be the case, it is truly miraculous that he has survived for so long on his own. Besides cat-killing motorists, those that lack homes and responsible guardians must contend with dogs, other animals and, above all, yobs and other humans who are intent upon doing them harm.

While it is by no means cursed with the world's worst weather, Dudley is far from being a tropical resort. For example, from November until the end of March the thermometer hovers between overnight lows of around the freezing mark to daytime readings in the mid-forties Fahrenheit. Plus, a cold rain falls on the average of every third day.

Although the city has made strides in recent years to clean up the pollution left over from its industrial past, its air quality is still not good. Today, the problem is vehicular emissions and with a population of eighty thousand souls that translates into a considerable number of motorists and a substantial problem with pollution. (See the Dudley News, February 27, 2019, "Dudley Is Home to the West Midlands' Second Biggest Pollution Hotspot" and the Shropshire Star of Ketley in Telford, March 5, 2019, "More Than Two-Hundred Sites Break Pollution Laws.")

As if all the polluted air that Snitch is forced to breathe in and out every day were not sufficient in order to choke him to death, it is nothing less than a minor miracle that the garbage he is fed by Colbourne has not done the trick. Most notably, his daily regimen of fish and chips that Wells so idiotically praised to high heaven is laden with enough saturated and trans fats, cholesterol, and calories to kill an elephant, let alone a diminutive cat.

Plus like most such purveyors, the BCLM uses lard (the rendered remains of murdered pigs) in order to fry its fish and chips and its consumption has been linked to heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. Also, it is hard to believe that the baking soda and vinegar that the museum uses in order to make its batter and the salt and still more vinegar that it sprinkles on its finished product could be doing Snitch's health any favors.

In recent photographs, he looks to be already obese and, possibly, prediabetic. While an occasional bite of fried fish is not going to kill him, he should not be fed a steady diet of such garbage.

"I see him almost every day and the maintenance team all have a special bond with him," Colbourne averred to the BCLM. "Someone's always fussing him or treating him."

Since it would be unusual for Colbourne to be working more than five days a week, it may be safely deduced that he does not even see, let alone feed, Snitch oftener than three to four times a week. Secondly, as an employee of the museum, he likely receives the fish and chips gratis. 

That naturally segues into the question of if he truly does love Snitch as much as he claims and "can't imagine life without his companionship," why does he not invest a few bob in purchasing some high-quality commercial wet food, kibble, vitamins, and milk for him? Equally concerning, if Snitch is at best only receiving a once-a-day ration of fish and chips, what is he doing for sustenance the remainder of the time?

Hopefully, he has not been reduced to either eating out of trash cans or to cadging handouts from perfect strangers. If that is indeed Colbourne's idea of how to properly treat a cat, he is by no means alone in his warped thinking.

For example, Nadine Biewer purposefully turned loose her cat, King Loui I, to roam the six-hundred-twenty-one-acre campus of Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) and its surrounding streets in Aachen with predictably tragic results. Fed a steady diet of garbage by the students and others, he died of throat cancer at a tender age.  (See Cat Defender posts of July 12, 2017 and September 15, 2017 entitled, respectively, "A Death Watch Has Begun for King Loui I Who Has Been Abandoned to Wander the Dangerous Streets of Aachen by His Derelict Owner and the Ingrates at RWTH" and "King Loui I's Days of Roaming the Perilous Streets of Aachen Come to a Sad End Shortly after He Is Diagnosed with Inoperable Throat Cancer.") 

In addition to flagrantly depriving Snitch of a steady supply of cat food, Colbourne also has neglected to afford him any form of protection, an indoor home and, with one notable exception, veterinary care. As for how that he could be so negligent and uncaring, he has in his own words unwittingly supplied one possible explanation to that conundrum.

"I lost my dog Rose over Christmas (presumably in 2016) but seeing Tiger every day really helped me through that," he confessed to the BCLM. "He's such an attractive and loving cat."

C'est-à-dire, Colbourne is a dog-lover and as such he never has seen fit to welcome Snitch into his home. Instead, he merely uses him as a pleasant distraction in order to relieve the tedium of his boring, dead-end job.

Contrary to whatever he may believe, that is hardly the same thing as loving a cat and being a conscientious and responsible guardian. Rather, it is simply naked exploitation with little or no regard for Snitch's pressing everyday needs and welfare.

Even more alarming, Wells certainly was cognizant of all of that when she so enthusiastically gave Colbourne legal custody of him. Like Davies with Georgie, she too did not want any part of Snitch.

Clearly, neither Wells, Colbourne, nor the BCLM have any business being entrusted with the care of a cat. The guardianship of one of these exquisite beings requires, at a minimum, a lifetime commitment, fidelity, and a steadfast commitment to its safety, health, and well-being and, deplorably, none of them have been willing to provide Snitch with any of those essentials. What they all in turn so richly deserve are long jail sentences for neglect or, at the very least, swift kicks in their rotten asses.  

Likewise, it is all but impossible to find anything positive to say about the reportage of the Daily Mail and other news outlets. When it comes to their coverage of cats like Snitch, the capitalistic media time and time again prove themselves to be, at best, sloppy, negligent, uncaring, and dishonest.

Furthermore, that criticism applies in spades to the RSPCA and other animal welfare charities. It would, after all, be expecting too much of organizations that categorically refuse to even investigate outrageous acts of animal cruelty to bother themselves with cases of abject neglect and abandonment.

 

Sadly,  as things eventually turned out, Snitch did not have long to enjoy his newfound notoriety in that he suffered a stroke in January of 2019. True to form, the big phony-baloney Colbourne did not want any part of either the bother or the expense of caring for him during his convalescence and instead fobbed off those sacred tasks upon one of his unidentified co-workers on the maintenance team at BCLM who is married to a veterinary nurse.

It has not been revealed if Wells was informed of the dire straits that Snitch had fallen into and therefore given an opportunity to correct the simply monstrous mistake that she had made two years earlier by refusing to retake custody of him. Being a veterinary nurse herself, she easily could have procured for him the best medical care available and, most likely, free of charge to boot.

In April of that same year, Snitch suffered a second stroke and afterwards either died from it or, more likely, was deliberately killed off on the orders of his new owner. It likewise is not known if he was afforded a  burial worthy of a cat of his caliber or if his remains were nonchalantly tossed out in the trash.

"Tiger had a short, but peaceful, retirement away from the museum before sadly succumbing to another stroke," the BCLM wrote in an October 1, 2020 e-mail letter. "His passing was a great sadness to us all and he is fondly remembered by all the team."

There possibly could be a grain of truth in those sentiments but the e-mail is nonetheless silent on any plans to establish a permanent memorial in his honor so as to keep his memory alive. The museum also, if it had really cared about him, easily could have allowed him to have been buried on its grounds.

If Snitch's turbulent life demonstrates anything at all, it serves as a rather poignant reminder of the rank selfishness and naked exploitative nature of mankind. In his case, Wells, Colbourne, and the museum merely used him for their own amusement and selfish ends without even providing him with so much as a jot of protection from his species' sworn enemies, shelter from the elements, a good quality diet, and meaningful and timely veterinary intervention. It accordingly is totally impossible to regard them as being anything other than rotten, despicable bastards!

Photos: Bruce Adams of the Daily Mail.  

        

Cruelly and Heartlessly Abandoned in the Godforsaken Scottish Highlands a Dozen Years Ago, Georgie Is Amazingly Found to Be Still Alive but Her Former Owner Does Not Want Any Part of Her

How Could So Many People Have Turned Their Backs on Georgie?

"My instinct was to jump in the car and collect Georgie straight away but we have another nine-year-old cat now. When I spoke with the centre (Cats Protection's Glasgow Adoption Centre) I knew our life now just wouldn't suit Georgie as she doesn't like other pets and needs space to come and go."
-- Amy Davies

October of 2008 began innocuously enough for a pretty five-year-old tortoiseshell named Georgie from Rochdale, sixteen kilometers northwest of Manchester City in the conurbation known as Greater Manchester, when her guardian, Amy Davies, took her on a camping trip to the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park in the Scottish Highlands, thirty-nine kilometers north of Glasgow via the A809 motorway. The month most assuredly did not end that way for her, however, in that the seemingly happy nature excursion quickly morphed into an interminable holiday in hell that did not end until, amazingly enough, earlier this spring.

Press reports have failed to speculate on just how long the camping trip lasted, suffice it to say that when it came time for Davies to depart for home she did so by leaving Georgie behind and all alone in the godforsaken Highlands in order to fend for herself. Under just about all imaginable circumstances that would have been the end of the story and the outside world never would have had any inkling that she had ever so much as graced the face of the earth, let alone what had become of her.

The Fates had other plans in store for her, however, and it was, oddly enough, due to the coronavirus that she was belatedly, as Charles Dickens once famously said of Dr. Alexandre Manette in his 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, "recalled to life." That stunning development was made possible because, unbeknownst to Davies, Georgie had not perished in the wilderness but rather she had persevered there for twelve long, hard, and lonely years.

In late March of this year, the operator of the park, Forestry and Land Scotland, was forced into closing the facility due to the coronavirus pandemic and that was when a staffer belatedly decided to take Georgie to Cats Protection's facility in Glasgow. At the charity she was scanned and an implanted microchip not only was located but, much more importantly, found to still be working and decipherable. So, thus some small measure of good has indeed emerged from so much suffering and the deaths of so many cats and humans alike.

Predictably, Davies had neglected to keep her contact information up-to-date and therefore both the telephone number and e-mail address in the database linked up to the chip were no longer valid. That did not deter Cats Protection for long however in that it eventually was able to successfully track her down via a recorded delivery letter. That by the way rather poignantly demonstrates that although the regular mail may be slow at times, it is still far more reliable than either its electronic equivalent or the telephone.

"We were amazed when we saw the Rochdale address on Georgie's microchip," Lynsey Anderson of Cats Protection's Glasgow Adoption Centre marveled to The Guardian of London on August 4th. (See "Cat That Went Missing on Scottish Holiday Found Twelve Years Later.")

Whereas any woman who truly loved a cat would have been ecstatic to have learned that her long-lost companion had been found alive after such a very long time, that was hardly the case with Davies. "My instinct was to jump in the car and collect Georgie straight away but we have another nine-year-old cat now," she instead told The Guardian. "When I spoke with the centre (Cats Protection's Glasgow Adoption Centre) I knew our life now just wouldn't suit Georgie as she doesn't like other pets and needs space to come and go."

Without so much as giving the momentous matter so much as a second thought, she promptly turned around and committed the same despicable crime that she had perpetrated twelve years previously. "It's really sad that after all this time we won't be reunited but I have to do what's best for Georgie," is how that she conveniently and expeditiously washed her dirty hands of the matter.

Clearly, absence does not always make the heart grow fonder; au contraire, those souls that are already as hard as rocks, calloused, and think only of money and themselves tend rather to ossify even more as they age.

Every bit as eye-popping, she did not have any trouble whatsoever in quickly locating a more than willing accomplice in order to assist her in the callous sherking of her filial obligations to Georgie. "I could hear how much she wanted to come and see her but her concern for Georgie's happiness really shone through," is how that Anderson backed her up all the way to The Guardian.

To put the matter bluntly, neither Davies' nor Anderson's account of events is in any way credible. First of all, although The Guardian claims that Davies did indeed look for Georgie, she could not possibly have searched either very long or very hard.

Rochdale Is Not All That Far from the Scottish Highlands

"We were heartbroken when Georgie didn't come back on our last day at Loch Lomond (a lake in the park)," is all that she had to say on the matter to The Guardian. Suffice it to point out that belatedly shedding a few crocodile tears is hardly the same thing as organizing an extensive and prolonged search for a missing moggy.

Secondly, Davies quite obviously did not take the time in order to alert staffers at the park that Georgie was missing. Specifically, she should have left them a photograph of her, informed them of the presence of the implanted microchip and, above all, supplied them with her own name, street address, e-mail address, and telephone number.

Thirdly, she never alerted Cats Protection in Glasgow or any other feline rescue groups in the area, including the caretakers of managed colonies, that her cat had done a runner. Fourthly, at no time during the intervening twelve years did she ever contact the park concerning Georgie.

Fifthly, given that the park is located only four-hundred kilometers north of Rochdale, she easily could have returned to the area at almost anytime in as little as four hours and thirty-nine minutes via the M6 motorway and resumed her search for Georgie. Sixthly, she even neglected to keep her contact information current in the database linked up to chip inside of Georgie.

Her rationale for not having reclaimed Georgie also contains two apparently false assertions. For instance, in a July 28th posting on its Facebook page, Cats Protection's Glasgow Adoption Centre clearly states that it is Davies' current resident feline, and not Georgie, that does not like other cats. Secondly, Davies' rejection of her has not preserved her freedom to come and go as she sees fit but rather it has robbed her of it entirely.

The inescapable conclusion that emerges from all of that is that after she had cruelly deserted Georgie she never so much as even once attempted to ascertain what had become of her. Furthermore, her adamant refusal to take her back now is merely more frosting on a very stale cake.

Even though it is a risky proposition to tar an entire community with the same brush, Rochdalians have anything but a stellar reputation online and the city itself is year after year ranked as one of the worst places to live in all of England. (See The Mirror of London, December 6, 2018, "Top Ten Worst Places to Live in the United Kingdom -- Is Your Town on the List?")

"Welcome to the cesspit of the universe, where evolution took a break and spat out this breed of useless slack-jawed yocals (sic) with less IQ than a glass of water, and told them to breed with their sisters over and over and over," is what one critic had to say about them to ilivehere.co.uk in an undated 2019 posting.  (See "Top Ten Worst Places to Live in England 2019.")

It accordingly is not all that unusual for a total lack of regard for others and conventional standards of common decency and morality to be accompanied by the flagrant mistreatment of cats and other animals. For instance, on August 22nd of last year, an unleashed dog was allowed by its unidentified male owner to trespass onto a private residence on Brimrod Lane in the Sudden section of Rochdale and savagely kill Jacob Hazley's beloved eleven-year-old gray, brown, and white female, Sparkle.

No arrest was ever made in the case and it is extremely doubtful that the killing was ever even looked into by either the peelers or the RSPCA. (See Cat Defender post of September 22, 2019 entitled "Sparkle Is Killed on the Front Stoop of Her House by an Unleashed Dog in the Latest of Centuries-Old Deadly Attacks That Bear the Unmistakable Imprimatur of the House of Commons.")

Speaking more broadly, owners who cruelly desert their cats while either on holidays or when traveling from one destination to another is far more pervasive problem than is generally acknowledged. For example on August 21, 2016, Graham Skelly and his ten-year-old son were motoring cross-country from Seattle, Washington, to their new home in Arlington, Virginia, when they decided to stop at the State of Michigan Welcome Center in New Buffalo, just cross the Indiana-Michigan state line and located one-hundred-twenty-two kilometers east of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan.

The Location of the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park Is Indicated in Red

While they were at the rest stop, their fourteen-year-old cat Milkie was spooked by a dog and fled into the nearby woods. Skelly and his son devoted only two hours of their time to searching for him before inexcusably deserting him and continuing on their merry way.

Unlike Davies with Georgie, however, they did leave behind their contact information with Alyson Payne, an employee of the rest stop, and on August 26th she was able to locate and successfully trap Milkie. To his credit, Skelly belatedly decided to do the right thing by devoting ten hours of his time to backtracking the one-thousand-thirty-three kilometers that separate Arlington from New Buffalo and on August 28th he arrived and collected Milkie. (See Cat Defender post of September 23, 2016 entitled "Cruelly and Irresponsibly Abandoned at a Michigan Rest Stop, Milkie Is Saved by Staffers Who Did What His Derelict Owner Was Unwilling to Do.")

Even more reprehensible than callous and uncaring owners like Davies and Skelly who refuse to search for cats that have accidentally gone AWOL, are those monsters who take along their loyal companions on holidays and road trips with the explicit purpose in mind of dumping them at remote locales. For example, Atlantic City's Boardwalk is a popular destination for such cretins who falsely believe that Alley Cat Allies of Bethesda, Maryland, which maintains several TNR colonies there, will be able to safeguard their cats from both the elements and their numerous sworn enemies. (See Cat Defender posts of July 5, 2007, December 10, 2011, and August 24, 2017 entitled, respectively, "Bird and Wildlife Proponents, Ably Assisted by The Press of Atlantic City, Launch a Malicious Libel Campaign Against Feral Cats," "Snowball Succumbs to the Inevitable after Toughing It Out for Two Decades at Atlantic City's Dangerous Underwood Hotel," and "The Brutal Murders of a Trio of Atlantic City's Boardwalk Cats Provide an Occasion for the Local Rag and PETA to Whoop It Up and to Break Open the Champagne.")

In light of her simply monstrous desertion of Georgie, it certainly did not come as any great surprise that Davies is now attempting to rationalize, and thus to excuse, her abominable conduct. "It was such a lovely surprise to hear that she was not only well but had seemingly been having a great time meeting campers," she mindlessly caroled to The Guardian.

Lost amidst all the hubbub has been almost any discussion of exactly how Georgie was able to have stayed alive for twelve years under such hellish circumstances and, especially, in such a forbidding environment. The only clue offered up to that conundrum by The Guardian is that she was cared for by park staffers and tourists.

While that undoubtedly must have been true to a certain extent, it still does not explain what kind of grub, how much, and how often that she was fed and watered. Furthermore, her recent trip to the vet was, most likely, the only one that she ever received during the dozen years that she was forced to spend wandering in the wilderness.

Perhaps most importantly of all, no mention whatsoever has been made of whether or not she was provided with any type of shelter. In particular, winters in the Scottish Highlands are cold and snowy and a damp wind is constantly blowing.

To make conditions even more unbearable, the area receives only six to eight hours of sunlight during the winter months. It accordingly is hard to imagine that the Highlands could ever be anything other than a godforsaken hellhole that is unfit for habitation by either man or, especially, a footloose feline on her own.

On top of all of that, there is not any shortage of eagles, falcons, foxes, and pine martens to prey upon cats. It therefore is hard to imagine how that she made it through all of those hard, lonely years unless staffers at the park provided her with some sort of shelter.

It additionally staggers the mind that none of them ever was moved to alleviate her desperate plight by removing her from he elements and predators and thus providing her with a warm, secure, and loving home. The same criticism also can be leveled against the campers who year after year freely availed themselves of the love, devotion, and companionship that she so freely bestowed upon them only to turn around and cruelly abandon her by returning to their comfortable, bourgeois existences without taking her along with them.

The report in The Guardian may not be completely accurate, however. For instance, in a July 26th posting on its Facebook page, Cats Protection's Glasgow office states that Georgie turned up at a campsite in Rowardennnan, a small rural community on the eastern shore of Lake Lomand, a year ago. In an August 14th posting, it amended that assessment by stating that she had been living there for about five years.

Campers at the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park Where Georgie Lived for Years

It therefore is entirely possible that Georgie spent a lion's share of the twelve years that she was off the radar screen living with some local family. If so, it nonetheless is odd that no one from that family has come forward in order to reclaim her.

It also is entirely possible that she could have been living with either a camper or a staffer for an extended period of time who later decided to return to the park and dump her. The more that Georgie's plight is scrutinized, the more it seems likely that she has been the victim of multiple abandonments.

Nobody will ever know for sure, however, unless those individuals who knew and cared for her over the years should belatedly decide to come forward and explain what happened and that seems to be asking too much of human nature.

None of that in any way alters the sobering conclusion that Davies, staffers at the park, and campers alike all failed her miserably in her times of greatest need. The mere fact that she is still alive today is a testament to her resourcefulness and indomitable will to live. C'est-à-dire, she survived in spite of their callousness, selfishness, and uncaring, exploitative natures.

"This (case) really does highlight the importance of keeping chip details up-to-date," Anderson opined to the Daily Mail on August 4th. (See "Cat That Went Missing on a Scottish Camping Holiday Is Found -- Twelve Years Later.") "Without it we'd never have known Georgie's history or have been able to put Amy's mind to rest after all this time."

First of all as noted above, Davies' heart has been as cold as Antarctica ever since she, of her own volition, decided to abandon Georgie way back in 2008. It therefore seems highly unlikely that any thoughts of Georgie lost in the Scottish Highlands and struggling to eke out some sort of meager existence have ever intruded upon her nightly repose.

Secondly, Cats Protection's enthusiastic endorsement of microchips can easily be explained by all the moola that it rakes in by fobbing off these almost totally worthless installments of Silicon Valley snake oil onto gullible cat owners. Moreover, in furtherance of its twin goals of lining its pockets and controlling the lives of both cats and their owners it has been feverishly lobbing members of the House of Commons for years to legally mandate that all cats be microchipped.

By far and away the most salient argument against microchips is that they do not afford cats so much as an iota of protection against motorists, dogs, predators, despisers of the species, and others that are intent upon doing them harm. (See Cat Defender post of May 25, 2006 entitled "Plato's Misadventures Expose the Pitfalls of RFID Technology as Applied to Cats.")

Secondly, as such they infuse owners not only with a false sense of security but also encourage them to be careless with their cats' lives. Thirdly, they furnish veterinarians and the operators of shelters with yet still one more (as if they needed it?) convenient excuse in order to exterminate cats en masse.

Even though the lives of homeless cats are no less precious than those of the domiciled, shelters, Animal Control officers, cops, and veterinarians always have had a field day eradicating the former. Now that microchips have become en vogue, they are seizing upon their absence in order to slander and libel scores of cats as being homeless in a prelude to killing them.

For example, that was the rationale employed by the unidentified surgery that exterminated many of the cats that were trapped and removed from the grounds of Florida International University earlier this spring. (See Cat Defender post of August 7, 2020 entitled "A Gaggle of Indolent Broom Jockeys with Too Much Free Time on Their Hands Go into League with a Morally Retarded Administrator in Order to Doom the Resident Felines at Florida International University in Miami.")

Milkie Was Cruelly Abandoned at a Michigan Rest Stop

Such cockeyed thinking is bound to lead to the murders of countless domesticated cats simply because many owners do not microchip their beloved companions. At other times, their executioners are unable to either locate or to decipher their chips. Still other owners, such as Davies, either do not bother to keep their contact information current or, if they do, they no longer want any part of their long-lost cats.

In the final analysis, collars with name tags and tattoos are still the smarter choices for owners who truly care about their cats' safety and well-being. At least they are visible to the naked eye as opposed to chips that can only be detected and deciphered by shelters and veterinarians equipped with scanners.

In Georgie's case, she could have been easily identified and quickly reunited with Davies if she had been outfitted with either of these old-fashioned alternatives. (See Cat Defender post of October 30, 2006 entitled "A Collar Saves Turbo from Extermination after He Is Illegally Trapped by Bird-Loving Psychopaths.")

That is not meant in any way to imply that collars do not also have their drawbacks and limitations as well. (See Cat Defender posts of May 28, 2008 and June 22, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Collars Turn into Death Traps for Trooper and Que but Both Are Rescued at the Eleventh Hour" and "Hobson Is Forced to Wander Around Yorkshire for Months Trapped in an Elastic Collar That Steadily Was Eating Away at His Shoulder and Leg.")

Although there still might be some benefit to be realized from augmenting collars and tattoos with implanted microchips, even that is a contentious point given that the latter have been linked to cancer and paralysis. (See Cat Defender posts of September 21, 2007, November 6, 2010, and April 28, 2016 entitled, respectively, "The FDA Is Suppressing Research That Shows Implanted Microchips Cause Cancer in Mice, Rats, and Dogs," "Bulkin Contracts Cancer from an Implanted Microchip and Now It Is Time for Digital Angel® and Merck to Answer for Their Crimes in a Court of Law," and "Sassie Is Left Paralyzed as the Result of Yet Still Another Horribly Botched Attempt to Implant a Thoroughly Worthless and Pernicious Microchip Between Her Shoulders.")

Secondly, database administrators in at least one instance have taken steps in order to prevent a lawful owner from reclaiming a lost cat. (See Cat Defender post of January 24, 2017 entitled "Tigger Is Finally Reunited with His Family Despite the Best Efforts of the Administrators of a Microchip Database to Keep Them Apart.")

Plus, there is always the very real possibility that the current caretaker of a long-lost cat will be unwilling to surrender it even when an implanted microchip has been belatedly discovered. Furthermore, the legal duty and authority of veterinarians and shelters under such circumstances is far from clear.

In the final analysis, a reliance upon technology is a piss-poor substitute for dedicated owners who take their cats' safety and well-being to heart. Deplorably, that is only rarely the case.

In point of fact, the atrocities committed against cats by their irresponsible owners are so numerous and extensive that it could be argued with some force that they even dwarf the machinations of ornithologists, wildlife biologists, PETA, cops, shelters, and veterinarians. To put the matter succinctly, with a blackguard like Davies as an owner, what possible use could Georgie ever have had for enemies?

At Cats Protection, Georgie was examined and subsequently diagnosed to be underweight and, tragically, suffering from Feline Hyperthyroidism (FH). (See The New York Times' Magazine, May 16, 2017, "The Mystery of the Wasting House-Cats," Mother Nature Network, July 12, 2019, "Why Hyperthyroidism in Cats Is Such a Big Deal," and The People's Pharmacy, July 11, 2019, "Radioactive Iodine for Hyperthyroidism Increases Cancer Risk.")

After attempting to put some weight on her, Cats Protection gave Georgie a thyroidectomy in late August. Despite some concern that she would not be able to tolerate being anesthetized at her age, she nonetheless apparently came through the surgery with flying colors and at last check was said to be recuperating as expected.

Georgie's Life Is Now in the Hands of Cats Protection 

It never has been explained, however, why Cats Protection waited so long in order to treat her in that it, presumably, has had custody of her ever since late March. That is tres important considering that the life-expectancy for cats suffering from FH is only three to five years.

Presumably, Cats Protection has been footing the entire bill for her care and veterinary treatment without Davies contributing so much as a solitary sou. Nevertheless, an appearance of fidelity and caring must be maintained.

"Her previous family will keep in touch with us to find out how she's doing while she's with us," Cats Protection declared July 28th on its Facebook page. The charity never will come clean on the matter but it nonetheless would come as quite a shock if a rotter in the woodpile like Davies has inquired so much as even once about Georgie's well-being.

In the meantime, she is patiently awaiting final clearance from her veterinarians before being put up for adoption."We're looking for a quiet home for Georgie where she can be the only cat, enjoy her space and have plenty of garden to explore," Anderson disclosed to The Guardian. "She's very loving and enjoys human company so (she) will make a brilliant companion."

That was a reaffirmation of a pledge that the organization had made earlier on July 28th on its Facebook page. "Georgie will be cared for by us until we are ready to find her another loving home," is how that it attempted to reassure the public.

Hopefully this time around Cats Protection is in earnest but that has not always been the case. (See Cat Defender posts of August 26, 2015 and February 17, 2016 entitled, respectively, "A Myriad of Cruel and Unforgivable Abandonments, a Chinese Puzzle, and Finally the Handing Down and Carrying Out of a Death Sentence Spell the End of Long-Suffering and Peripatetic Tigger" and "Cats Protection Races to Alfie's Side after His Owner Dies and He Winds Up in the Street, Swears It Is Going to Help Him, and Then Turns Around and Has Him Whacked.")

The absolute best that therefore can be hoped for is that the lucky individual who is finally given custody of Georgie will truly appreciate her and that includes loving her to bits and never leaving her side. That person also should endeavor to ensure that she always has an abundance of good-quality food to eat, topnotch veterinary care, and a safe and secure fenced-in garden in which to frolic.

She does not have a lot of time left but the years that she does have can be quality ones that are filled with much love and an absence of want. If her new guardian could be prevailed upon to do that much for her, either she or he will have accomplished something that none of the other countless individuals who have walked in and out of her life over the years were even willing to attempt.

On the face of it, that does not seem to be all that much to ask but if Georgie's years of interminable suffering demonstrate anything it is that most individuals use cats like they do toilet paper. Hopefully, Cats Protection will not fall asleep at the switch but rather that it will remain vigilant and thus make sure that she receives the quality of care that she so richly deserves, especially after having been so cruelly denied it for all of her life.

Lamentably, she is already yesterday's news as far as the capitalistic media are concerned but perhaps Cats Protection can be convinced not to let her memory fade. Specifically, it would be much appreciated if it would post periodic updates on both its web site and Facebook page so as to let her many fans know how that she is doing. She is a cat that is not only worthy of veneration but also of being celebrated and cherished, especially while that she is still around to smell the roses.

In the end, however, there simply is not any way of detecting very much in the way of sunlight through the shroud of sadness that has always enveloped Georgie's short, tragic life. Even at this late date it remains all but impossible to comprehend the prolonged abominable cruelty, abject neglect, and naked exploitation that she was subjected to at the hands of Davies and the staffers and campers at the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park. Compassion, common decency, and morality are seemingly in short supply everywhere nowadays but in Rochdale and the Scottish Highlands they would appear, with the notable exception of Cats Protection, to have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Photos: Cats Protection's Glasgow Adoption Centre (Georgie), the Daily Mail (map of Georgie's rambles and campers at the park), Grinner of Wikipedia (location of the park), and Alyson Payne (Milkie).