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.