Slow Deaths Trapped Inside Apartments, Precarious Existences on the Street, and Swift Executions at the Hands of Veterinarians and the Operators of Shelters Are About All That Elderly Cats Can Expect in Return for Their Years of Love and Devotion to Their Ungrateful Owners

Ian Wound Up Trapped Indoors with His Deceased Owner

                                     

"The children prayed and the preacher preached

Time and mercy is out of your reach.

I'll fix your feet so you can't walk

I'll lock your jaw so you can't talk.

I'll close your eyes so you can't see

This very hour come and go with me.

Death I come to take the soul

Leave the body and leave it cold.

To drop the flesh up off the frame

Dirt and worm both have a claim.

Oh Death

Whooooah Death 
Won't you spare me over 'til another year?"

-- an old American folk song.

Facing the final curtain is never easy and that admonition applies equally to cats as well as to humans. With the latter, the subject itself is so distasteful that it is even verboten to talk about it.

Being old, all alone, sickly, and strapped for cash is difficult enough in its own right but knowing that one's time on this earth is fast running out is even more terrifying. About the only thing positive that can be said about that predicament is that the elderly do still enjoy some protections under the law and that medical, nutritional, and housing assistance, no matter how inadequate, is usually available to them in most instances.

It is an entirely different story as far as ailing and elderly cats are concerned in that they do not enjoy any of those advantages and therefore are pretty much dependent upon the beneficence of humans for their continued survival. Shamefully, they are almost always disappointed by what that they receive in return.

Too bone-lazy to care for them and too cheap to foot the bill for their veterinary care, just about all owners hire unscrupulous veterinarians (is there any other type?) in order to kill them off. Their corpses are then either burned or nonchalantly tossed out in the trash. It thus is almost as if they never had existed in the first place.

That in a nutshell is a cat's lot in this miserable, god-rotten old world. Decades of love, devotion, and faithful companionship count for absolutely nothing with their cold-hearted, moralless, and exploitative owners who look down upon them as being little more than pairs of old shoes to be gotten rid of as expeditiously and economically as possible as soon as they either start to show signs of wear and tear or their presence is no longer desired.

Against all odds, a few lucky felines somehow manage to beat their bloodthirsty owners to the punch by outliving them and thus denying them an opportunity to, first, betray and then to snuff out their precious lives. Even under those fortunate circumstances, their victories almost always turn out to be short-lived and pyrrhic ones owing to the fact that this world is hardly a hospitable domain for even young and healthy ones, let alone those that have grown old and are in frail health.

As far as the latter group is concerned, their options are indeed few and far between. The first hurdle that they must surmount is that of freeing themselves from the apartments and houses of their now deceased guardians.

In that regard, cat flaps that have been left unlocked, windows that have been left ajar, and apertures in the woodwork of old houses are about their only avenues of escape. Even those cats that are ingenious enough in order to make it out alive are immediately confronted by a myriad of obstacles that are diametrically opposed to their desire to go on living.

Susi Was Left All Alone in an Apartment to Starve to Death

For example, predatory motorists who love nothing better than to run them down and to crush out the brains in their tiny heads are everywhere. Predators, such as dogs, coyotes, birds of prey, foxes, raccoons, skunks, and fishers, lie in wait for them not only in the rural landscapes of yesterday but also in the urban and suburban centers of today as well.

Their worst nemesis, however, is man in his multitude of guises. Animal Control officers, cops, scum-of-the-earth PETA, ailurophobes, and even those twenty-four carat phonies who dishonestly claim that they are doing homeless cats a favor by turning them in to the knackers who operate shelters are all lined up against them and ready to pounce as soon as they take their first baby steps on the long and tortuous road to freedom and deliverance.

Even those that are successfully able to evade their multitude of sworn enemies are still bedeviled by the never-ending search for food, water, and shelter. Veterinary care is nowhere to be found and it is almost superfluous to point out that any cat that has spent its entire life indoors under the care of a human has an awful lot to learn in a very short period of time about the alien world into which it has been thrust if it is going to survive.

On the other hand, those that have been cruelly declawed have almost no chance of surviving on their own. (See Cat Defender posts of November 29, 2010 and February 2, 2015 entitled, respectively, "Harrison's Turbulent Years Spent on the Street Are Yet Another Reason Why Declawing Is Not Only Cruel and Inhumane but Dangerous as Well" and "Cruelly Denatured and Locked Up Indoors for All of His Life, Nicky Is Suddenly Thrust into the Bitter Cold and Snow for Twenty-One Consecutive Days with Predictably Tragic Results.") 

No matter how heavily the deck is stacked against them, those cats are the fortunate ones because they at least have a slim chance of surviving. That is hardly the case with those that overnight find themselves trapped indoors with the lifeless bodies of their owners and with all avenues of escape foreclosed to them.

First of all, as soon as their food and water run out dehydration and emaciation set in accompanied by even more serious aliments, such as kidney and liver failure.  The loneliness, hopelessness, and futility of their dire predicaments also exact an immeasurable psychological toll from them.

For example, a handsome, ten-year-old tuxedo later dubbed Ian who lived on Knightswick Crescent in the Kingstanding section of Birmingham was left all alone with the corpse of his owner for an unspecified length of time when she died suddenly in May of 2013. Alerted by neighbors who had not seen the pensioner, who lived alone, out and about for some time, Police Community Support Officer Ian Concannon was summoned to the house where he found Ian curled up beside her lifeless body.

Not only did the deceased's relatives not want any part of him, they did not even know his name. He accordingly was handed over to Cats Protection who in turn named him in honor of his rescuer.

Ginger Was Adopted by a Relative but Still Met with Tragedy

"The circumstances were very sad and it must have been awful for the cat," the charity's Sheila Pennell, who later served as Ian's foster mother, said. "He was trapped indoors wondering why his owner would not wake up, feed him or let him out."

It never was disclosed precisely how long that he was forced to go without food, water, having his litter box changed, and human companionship, but living under such hellish conditions for even one day would have been one day too many for just about any feline.

 

Fortunately, Ian eventually recovered. "He's now over his trauma and has settled in well," Pennell added. "He's quirky and has a loving nature. But it is sad to see him looking out of his lonely pen in the nice weather wishing he had a new home and a garden of his own."

 

Achieving that last objective proved to have been a far more difficult task than the former in that after he had been sterilized, vaccinated, and microchipped he was forced to persevere through two failed adoptions. Even his namesake did not want any part of him.

"He's a lovely little cat and the circumstances in which we found him were very sad," Concannon later explained. "I like cats myself, but I live in a shared house with a landlady so I can't have him."

In the middle of June Ian was adopted out for the third time and Cats Protection later said that he had adjusted well to both his new guardian and surroundings. Best of all he was said to be in good health.

Sadly, that was the last that was ever heard about him. If he should still be alive, he would now be all of seventeen years old. (See Cat Defender post of July 27, 2013 entitled "Instead of Killing Her Off with a Jab of Sodium Pentobarbital and Then Burning Her Corpse, Ian Remains Steadfast at His Guardian's Side Long after Her Death.") 

The outcome was entirely different for a beautiful, eleven-year-old black cat named Susi from Basel whose woes began in February of last year when her owner, Lucy F., left her all alone in the apartment that they shared on Bärenfelserstraße in order to enter a local hospital for the treatment of an undisclosed ailment. Although she was supposed to have been away for only two days, she instead was transferred to an old folks' home and as a result never saw either her old abode or Susi again.

Tilly Found a Permanent Home at a Sanctuary

She never forgot about her beloved companion, however, and she even went so far as to pay a local social services agency to look after her. Equally important, she insisted that a new home be found for her and that she was not under any circumstances to be dumped at a shelter.

Leider, her trust in the shiftless bureaucrats turned out to have been badly misplaced in that they almost immediately stopped feeding and watering her. In response, Susi became withdrawn and stopped communicating with them.

By April, she had become incontinent. She somehow was able to hold on until finally on June 4th she was removed from the apartment and taken to Tierhilfe Regio Basel (TRB) in Allschwil, four kilometers southeast of Basel, who in turn rushed her to Kleintier Praxis in Reihen, eight kilometers northeast of Basel.

By that time she weighed only 2.5 kilograms (less than six pounds), was barely breathing, and far too weak to even stand on her own legs. Already famished, dehydrated, and running a temperature, she additionally was diagnosed to be suffering from an undisclosed infection and an elevated level of white blood cells. Worst of all, she was suffering from Feline Hyperthyroidism.

 

She was placed on intravenous fluids and antibiotics before inexplicably being returned to TRB where she died during the night of June 7th. Although for more than four months seemingly all of Basel was content to allow her to slowly starve to death in silence, her inexcusable death, if it accomplished nothing else, did serve to loosen a few tongues.

"Es ist schrecklich und absolut unbegreiflich, was passiert ist," Nicole Rudin of TRB exclaimed. "Seit Februar war die Katze allein der Wohnung an der Bärenfelserstraße. Niemand wolle die Verantwortung ubernehmen."

In addition to the myriad of physical deprivations, Susi also was forced to endure tremendous psychological stress. "Sicher hat Susi die alte Dame vermisst," Rudin added. "Vermutlich war sie nie viel allein vorher, und plötzlich wurde ihr nur einmal pro Tag Futter hingestellt."

She accordingly called upon the local prosecutor to file charges of animal neglect against unspecified parties under article twenty-six of the Tierschutzgesetz. She was seconded in that appeal by Daniel Stauffer of Kleintier Praxis.

Long-Suffering Jeany Finally Found a Home at a Shelter

"Das ganze stellt meines Erachtens einen schweren Verstoß gegen das Tierschutzgesetz dar," he swore. Predictably, nothing further was ever heard regarding the matter and those individuals and groups responsible for so hideously neglecting and killing Susi remain at large and unpunished to this very day. (See Cat Defender post of  July 13, 2019 entitled "Susi Is Knowingly Left All Alone in an Empty Apartment to Slowly Die of Starvation and Untreated Hyperthyroidism after Her Owner Is Confined to an Old Folks' Home.")

 

Normally, the best alternative for a cat that outlives its owner is for it to be taken in and cared for by a close relative of the deceased. That is because such an individual would be in the best position not only to be already acquainted with the cat but, more importantly, to understand how much it meant to the departed.

Regrettably, many pensioners have either outlived all of their close relatives or those that are still around now reside at distant locales. Even more disturbing, many surviving family members do not like cats and therefore do not want any part of those that have been left behind.

Beverley Hume of Newcastle-upon-Tyne did not hesitate however to take in her parents' fifteen-year-old tom Ginger when they exited this vale of tears in 2001. Although the arrangement worked out really well for the following ten years, it ended tragically for Ginger when Hume let him out to play in her garden on October 13, 2011. 
 
That was when he was abducted by an unidentified neighbor and handed over to the Newcastle Dog and Cat Shelter on Benton Road. He almost immediately was transferred to Blythman and Partners in the Gosforth section of town who promptly murdered him because he was old and thin.

The surgeons additionally alleged that he was in pain, had difficulty standing, and was suffering from an abscess, but Hume vociferously disputed all of those charges. What riled her the most, however, was that Ginger was executed a scant three hours after he had been let out into her garden.

"Ginger was put down without consent, without giving us a chance to find him," she said afterwards. "We should have been given at least twenty-four hours to find him. We believe our rights have been taken away by the vets." (See Cat Defender post of  January 11, 2012 entitled "A Deadly Intrigue Concocted by a Thief, a Shelter, and a Veterinary Chain Costs Ginger the Continued Enjoyment of His Golden Years.")   

Sanctuaries are another option for cats but their owners usually need to make and finalize such arrangements while that they are still alive. For example, a tortoiseshell named Tilly has spent more than twenty years at one in Wednesbury in the West Midlands that is operated by Joyce Clark.

Harvey Was Put Through Hell Before Being Killed by a Shelter

"Over the years that we have had Tilly at the sanctuary she has been passed over by more than thirty-thousand people looking for a cat," she disclosed a few years back in a frank acknowledgement of just how difficult it is to find homes for elderly felines. (See Cat Defender post of May 27, 2016 entitled "Snubbed by an Ignorant, Tasteless, and Uncaring Public for the Past Twenty-One Years, Tilly Has Forged an Alternative Existence of Relative Contentment at a Sanctuary in the Black Country.")

It is rare to be sure but occasionally shelters will take in an elderly cat and give it a permanent home.  For instance in 2010, Hände für Pfoten in the Arnum section of Hemmingen, six kilometers south of Hannover in Niedersachsen, took in a beautiful brown and gray female named Jeany who had been horribly neglected by her previous owner.

Not only had the woman failed to socialize, sterilize, and vaccinate her, but she also had condemned her to live in filth for years. "Der Anblick und der Geruch der Wohnung war uberschreiblich," the charity wrote November 21, 2017 on its web site.  (See "Jeany: bei uns zu Hause" under Aktuelles.)

At the shelter she now has access to a garden and is allowed to sleep in the business office. Yet, despite having lived there for ten years she still will not allow anyone other than the charity's Kerstin Küster to touch her. "Heute geht es ihr gut," the charity nevertheless summed up in the article cited supra. (See Cat Defender post of  June 15, 2018 entitled "Jeany Finally Finds the Lasting Home and Compassionate Care Denied Her by Her Irresponsible and Grossly Negligent Owner at -- of All Places -- a Shelter in Hemmingen.") 

After his guardian had died unexpectedly in December of 2016, a thirteen-year-old male named Harvey was taken in by Yorkshire Cat Rescue (YCR) in Keighley, West Yorkshire. It tried without success to adopt him out twice and even once attempted to place him in foster care but that ploy also backfired.

It finally was able to place him with another fosterer who cared for him for over a year. In the end, however, YCR undid all of its previous stellar work by betraying Harvey and having him killed off. (See Cat Defender posts of October 27, 2020, July 29, 2019, March 12, 2018, and August 31, 2017 entitled, respectively, "Noble and Courageous Harvey Who So Desperately Wanted to Go on Living Is Instead Unforgivably Betrayed and Killed Off by His Foster Mother and Yorkshire Cat Rescue," "Repeatedly Shunned, Maligned, and Bandied About from One Place to Another, Harvey Is Now Engaged in the Most Important Battle of His Life," "Much Like a Nightmare That Stubbornly Refuses to End, Harvey Continues to Be Shuttled from One Home to Another at the Expense of His Health and Well-Being," and "With His Previous Owner Long Dead and Nobody Seemingly Willing to Give Him a Second Chance at Life, Old and Ailing Harvey Has Been Sentenced to Rot at a Shelter in Yorkshire.")

Earlier this month, seven cats wound up at Tierheim Arche Noah in Gotha, Thüringia, after their owner had died. Compounding an already unfortunate situation, all of them had, apparently, spent their entire lives cut off completely from the outside world in a single room with their female owner.

Like Jeany, none of them had been either sterilized or socialized. The cats, which include both females and males and range in age from eighteen-months to seven years, do however get along well with other felines and as a consequence placing them in homes that already contain other resident felines should not be a problem as it was for YCR with Harvey.

A Pair of the Gotha Seven Awaiting New Homes

According to shelter manageress Katrin Matthieß, all of them have been subsequently sterilized and are in good health. Anyone therefore wishing to offer any of them a loving home can contact the shelter either by telephone at 49-03621 755 425 or by e-mail at info@tierheim-gotha.net. (See the Thüringer Allgemeine of Erfurt, November 5, 2020, "Sieben Katzen aus dem Kreis Gotha haben kein Zuhause mehr.")

Making legal provisions for the continued care of a beloved cat after one is no longer around is another option worth considering. Whereas doing so is a huge improvement over the morally abhorrent practice that some elderly owners have adopted of having their cats killed off before they themselves kick the bucket, there is not any guarantee that an owner's last wishes will be respected.

For example, before Larry Johnson died in July of 2007 he had a will made wherein he left his cat Princess and his US$6.5 million estate to his alma mater Juanita College in Huntington, Pennsylvania. Predictably, the good-for-nothing greedy eggheads gobbled up his moola in a nanosecond but did not want any part of Princess.
 
She accordingly was fobbed off on one of the deceased's neighbors in San Francisco but it is not known if that impromptu arrangement worked out for her benefit. (See Cat Defender post of June 9, 2008 entitled "A Small Pennsylvania College Greedily Snatches Up an Alumnus' Multimillion-Dollar Bequest but Turns Away His Cat Princess.")

Along that same line, Cats Protection of Haywards Heath in West Sussex has inaugurated a program called "Cat Guardians" whereby owners can will up to three of their cats to the charity. Although this is a free service, users of it are strongly encouraged to make monetary donations as well. As for now, it is only available to residents of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

Its major drawback, however, lies in the petit fait that the only guarantee that owners are given is that Cats Protection pledges "never to put a healthy cat to sleep." As YCR's killing of Harvey has vividly demonstrated, what constitutes a "healthy cat" lies in the eye of the beholder or, to put the matter even blunter, in the eye of the person who has the power to determine whether it lives or dies.

In the case of Cats Protection, that is a huge concern in that it has demonstrated time and time again that it cannot be trusted to make such momentous life and death decisions. In fact, no feline rescue group, shelter, veterinarian, or even owners themselves should be entrusted with such authority under any circumstances.

For example, on September 26, 2016 Cats Protection's North Hertfordshire branch got its hands on a beautiful eleven-year-old brown and white tom named Alfie who had wound up on the mean streets of Stevenage, fifty kilometers north of central London in Hertfordshire, after his owner had died. He was emaciated, smelled bad, his fur was matted, his nose swollen, and his right eye was red. Worst of all, he appeared to have been burned several times in the face with a cigarette.

Cats Protection Promised to Save Alfie but Instead Killed Him 

"Rest assured his little life has now changed for the better and he will receive all the care and attention he deserves," the charity's Blanca Kubler declared on October 1st.

A day later she was singing an altogether different tune. "Sadly he had bone cancer most probably," she said. "We took him on because it was going o be quite costly to treat him but there was nothing that we could do for him."

Unsinn! The organization could have treated his cancer and given him a home. That at least would have greatly improved his quality of life and demonstrated to him that not all humans are cat-hating monsters. It additionally is entirely conceivable that he might have lived for an extended period of time if only he had been given the treatment and care that he so direly needed and deserved.  

Every bit as revolting, the family of the deceased went along with Cats Protection's diabolical scheme. "The family of the deceased were with him at the end and are upset about it all," Kubler added for good measure.

If that is true, it would seem only logical to ask why then did they turn Alfie out into the street to live in the first place? Secondly, what were they doing while he was languishing on his own?

On the contrary, it certainly does not appear that either they or Kubler and Cats Protection ever gave so much as a tinker's damn about saving him. (See Cat Defender post of February 17, 2016 entitled "Cats Protection Races to Alfie's Side after His Owner Dies and He Winds Up on the Street, Swears It Is Going to Help Him, and Then Turns Around and Has Him Whacked.")

If that scenario sounds familiar it is because Cats Protection has a long history of promising to treat aged and injured cats only to turn around and kill them. For instance, that is precisely what it did earlier to a globe-trotting cat named Tiggger. (See Cat Defender post of August 26, 2015 entitled "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 for Long-Suffering and Peripatetic Tigger.")  

Earlier this year, the charity took custody of an elderly female named Georgie who miraculously had been found alive in the Scottish Highlands after having been missing and presumed dead for a dozen years. In late August, the organization had both of her thyroid glands surgically removed but since then it has steadfastly refused to divulge what has become of her.

Karin Tietz Did Right by Her Beloved Felix

Rather, the only thing that it has revealed is that she is not yet ready to be placed in another home and that in turn has fueled suspicion that she may have met with the same abhorrent fate as Tigger and Alfie. (See Cat Defender post of  September 8, 2020 entitled "Cruelly and Heartlessly Abandoned in the 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.") 

 

Even though placing elderly cats in the home of pensioners would seem to be a rather obvious solution, it has taken the pioneering work of Melanie Gottschalk of the Kilianstädten section of Schönek, twenty kilometers north of Frankfurt am Main in Hesse, to propel the matter into the forefront of public consciousness. Whereas the vast majority of potential adopters prefer kittens and younger cats, some pensioners are willing to welcome elderly ones into their homes because they are more settled and therefore usually require less care and attention.  

Elderly individuals, especially those that have lost their spouses, also value the special kind of companionship that only a cat can provide. The obvious drawback with such arrangements is that the adopted cats sometimes outlive their new guardians and thus wind up homeless and on death row for a second time. 

In Gottschalk's case, she begins by perusing the lost, found, and for sale notices on the Internet. She then contacts the advertisers, local veterinarians, and shelters in order to gain custody of the unwanted felines.

As soon as that has been accomplished, she places those that she is able with seniors while she fosters the remainder of them until homes become available for them. Her operation is, admittedly, small but if more shelters and rescue groups were willing to give it a try the dividends could be potentially huge. (See Cat Defender post of March 26, 2018 entitled "A Dedicated and Compassionate Kilianstädterin Has Found at Least a Partial Solution to the Tragic Plight of alte und obdachlos Katzen.")

With November being "Adopt a Senior Pet" month, there is not any better time to stop the unjust slaughter of elderly cats by adopting one today. Moreover, old cats are not necessarily just for old goats; au contraire, if the younger generations were to give them a try they might be pleasantly surprised by the treasures that they are bound to find. 

After all is said and done, however, the onus of providing for the continued care of a beloved cat falls squarely upon the shoulders of its owner. The sad and disturbing truth of the matter is that if they do not make ironclad arrangements for them before they shuffle off their mortal coils it is highly unlikely that either any individual or organization is going to be willing to do that for them.

Seventy-seven-year-old arthritic widow Karin Tietz of Röbel, one-hundred-forty-six kilometers north of Berlin in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, was acutely aware of the ramifications of that daunting dilemma. No longer physically able to either bend down and feed or to change the litter box of her beloved ten-year-old companion, Felix, she knew that she was destined to soon wind up in an old folks' home.

Before she was going to allow that to happen she proved herself to be an idealistic, stubborn, and determined German in the best sense of that connotation. "Ich gehe ins Heim, wenn ich weiß, dass Felix gut untergebracht," she insisted. With the assistance of Katrin Jacobs, an outpatient nurse with Müritzer für Tiere in Waren, twenty-three kilometers north of Röbel, she was finally able to place Felix with an elderly woman in Malchin, fifty-two kilometers north of Röbel, in June of last year. 

The RSPCA Stole and Murdered Nightshift

Shortly thereafter Tietz was hospitalized and, like Lucy F. with Susi, she never again saw either her home or Felix. (See Cat Defender post of August 31, 2019 entitled "A Devoted Röbelerin Adamantly Refuses to Enter an Alterheim Until She Has Successfully Secured a New Guardian for Her Beloved Felix.")

Felix's life need not have been placed in jeopardy and Susi need not have had to die if only the operators of nursing homes in Röbel and Basel had been willing to have shown so much as an ounce of compassion for them by allowing them to have come along with their devoted guardians. That is asking too much, however, of such bloodsucking capitalists who are unwilling to even safeguard the lives of the individuals under their care from deadly diseases, such as the coronavirus.

It is not a subject that is often broached, but losing a cat can have a devastating impact upon a devoted owner. For example, in March of 2011 fifty-eight-year-old Alan Jordan of Daventry Terrace in Treadworth, Gloucester, took his own life three weeks after his unidentified by name cat had mysteriously disappeared.

"The back door was ajar so I went in and opened the front door for my colleague," Graham Nicholson of the mental crisis team at the 2gether Trust, later explained. "We found Alan hanging (in his bedroom)."    

In a macabre twist worthy of O. Henry's 1905 short-story "The Gift of the Magi," the cat returned home to an empty house a fortnight after Jordan's suicide. (See Cat Defender post of January 2, 2012 entitled "With No Reason Left to Go on Living, a Treadworth Resident Takes His Own Life after His Beloved Cat Disappears.") 

Unable to get over the sudden death of his beloved thirteen-year-old cat Sophie on December 8, 2011, forty-four-year-old bachelor Michael McAleese of Hillcrest Road in the Parkstone section of Poole in Dorset chose to join her in that long ride on the dragon less than a fortnight later on December 21st. The only material difference between his death and that of Jordan was that he chose drugs as opposed to a rope in order to make his exodus.

"As soon as he saw Sophie he seemed to fall in love with her," McAleese's landlady, Adrienna Van Dijk, recalled. "She had the sweetest nature and they totally clicked. She was like a child to him."

It therefore is totally understandable that he was unable to go on without her. "He was devastated when she died and phoned me in the middle of the night. He slept with her for three days until he couldn't stand the smell any longer," Van Dikj continued. "I tried to persuade him life was more than a cat, but in his case it wasn't." (See Cat Defender post of June 12, 2012 entitled "Sophie's Death Proves to Be Too Much of a Burden for a Bachelor in Poole to Bear So He Elects to Join Her in the Great Void.") 

Slightly more than a year before Ginger was stolen off the streets of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and murdered by a veterinary chain, an almost identical crime was perpetrated against an eighteen-year-old male named Nightshift from Church Avenue in Selby, North Yorkshire. Let out at 6 p.m. on August 31, 2010 by his seventy-nine-year-old owner, Ann Baker, he was stolen off the street by the RSPCA and taken to an unidentified veterinarian who promptly killed him ninety minutes later at 7:30 pm.

Bear's Disappearance Left His Ailing Owner Distraught

Given that he was the last surviving link to he long dead husband, Nightshift's murder left her devastated. "She (the RSPCA inspector) just grabbed him off the street, bundled him into a van and had him destroyed," Baker explained.

Given that she had adopted him as a stray in 1992, she therefore had cared for him every day since he was a kitten. (See Cat Defender post of October 23, 2010 entitled "The RSPCA Steals and Executes Nightshift Who Was His Elderly Caretaker's Last Surviving Link to Her Dead Husband.")

In certain respects, having a cat to vanish without so much as a trace is even more difficult for an owner to recover from than is having one to either be murdered or to die of old age. At least in the latter instance some small measure of closure is usually possible over time.

To have one disappear when one is elderly and hospitalized with multiple myeloma is three times as worse. Nonetheless, that is what happened to fifty-four-year-old Sylvia Manning of Bunting Lane in Billericay, Essex, forty-five kilometers east of London, on February 22, 2013 when her beloved two-year-old tom, Bear, vanished.

"I was called in to hospital and got kept in. Bear was with Jim (Jim Wakeling her common law husband) at home that night but he hasn't been back since," she related. "I feel terrible I can't do anything or go and look for him."

Despite offering a reward for his return, enlisting the services of the Billericay Gazette, erecting Lost Cat posters, and placing notices online, as far as it is known she never was able to locate Bear. (See Cat Defender post of April 24, 2013 entitled "A Cancer Victim in Billericay Issues an Urgent Appeal for the Prompt Return of Her Beloved Cat, Bear.")

Not a good deal is understood about how that cats deal with the deaths of their owners but it is unmistakable that they do grieve and often quite visibly. For instance, a three-year-old male named Toldo from Montagnana in the province of Padova visited the grave of his deceased owner, seventy-one-year-old Renzo Iozzelli, every day after he died on September 22, 2011.

Not only did he make those trips on his own volition but he often would bring along with him tokens of his enduring love and place them on the grave. Although the sticks, leaves, twigs, plastic cups, and paper towels that he gathered may not have amounted to very much in the eyes of the world, they nonetheless symbolized his desire to be of assistance and to thus, possibly, bring back Iozzelli.

"He loved my husband. It was something else," his widow, Ada, marveled. "Now it's just me, my daughter, and my son-in-law and he's very affectionate with us too." (See Cat Defender post of March 28, 2013 entitled "Even he Finality of the Grave Fails to Diminish Toldo's Abiding Love and Devotion to His Long Dead Guardian.")  

This Unidentified Cat Kept Returning to Ismail Mat's Grave

In 2017, an unidentified white-colored cat was discovered to be repeatedly visiting the grave of Ismail Mat in an undisclosed city in Malaysia. Most perplexing of all, there was not any known connection between it and Mat.

"This white cat is actually not a pet cat, but probably a hometown cat near the mosque," Mat's grandson, Souffuan CZ, told The Mirror of London on September 19, 2017. (See "Mysterious White Cat Appears During Malaysian Man's Funeral and 'Refuses' to Leave His Grave.") "The presence of this cat is interesting to our family, because the cat wouldn't leave the grave when we wanted to go home."

One possible explanation could be that the cat knew Mat from either the mosque or the street. That does not even begin to explain however how that he knew that Mat had died. Also, the one thing that Mat had in common with Iozzelli is that the both of them were cat-lovers.

More recently it has been reported that another Malaysian cat, this time a yellow-colored female named Nana, had stopped eating and become rather sick for a while following the death of her owner, an unidentified retired schoolteacher. She has since recovered but is still visiting his grave more than two years after his death.

Sometimes she even sleeps there. She additionally is said to pay regular visits to his old jalopy as well as to a swing that he used to frequent.  

 

"Nana folgte Papa zur Moschee und wartete darauf, dass er seine Gebete beendete, bevor er ihm nach Hause folgte," the deceased's daughter, Hazlynn, is quoted by Bild der Frau of Berlin on October 1, 2020 as explaining. (See "Katze Nana besucht seit zwei Jahren das Grab ihres Herrchens.") 

That is not all, however, in that it is not only their dead guardians that cats mourn but also other cats that have passed away as well. For example, before it stole and murdered Nightshift, the RSPCA had done likewise to a nineteen-year-old male named Mork from Ruislip in Middlesex in May of 2007.

That heinous crime in turn left his sister, Mindy, disconsolate. "This man's (the RSPCA thief and murderer) broken our hearts. He has left Mork's sister, Mindy, without a companion," the siblings' owner, Katherine Parker-Brice, pointed out. "They were together for nineteen years and now been torn apart by a careless, casual act. His sister is pining for him. She keeps wandering around the house looking for him." (See Cat Defender post of June 5, 2007 entitled "The RSPCA's Unlawful Seizure and Senseless Killing of Mork Leaves His Sister, Mindy, Brokenhearted and His Caretakers Devastated" and the Albuquerque Journal, November 6, 2020, "Cats, Too, Grieve When Loved Ones Die.") 

Death is clearly a terrible thing for cats as well as humans and no one ever summed up the horrible business more poignantly than did legendary bluegrass singer Ralph Stanley when he performed an a cappella version  of an old American folk song entitled "O Death" for the Coen brothers' 2000 film, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" 

Nana Is Still Waiting for Her Owner to Return from the Dead

The sobering lyrics state in part:

"The children prayed and the preacher preached

Time and mercy is out of your reach.

I'll fix your feet so you can't walk

I'll lock your jaw so you can't talk.

I'll close your eyes so you can't see

This very hour come and go with me.

Death I come to take the soul

Leave the body and leave it cold.

To drop the flesh up off the frame

Dirt and worm both have a claim.

Oh Death

Whooooah Death 
Won't you spare me over 'til another year?"

With that in mind and considering all the things that cats and humans share and experience in common, it seems only appropriate to conclude that mankind needs to radically rethink how that it treats them and, for that matter, all animals in general. First and foremost, a cat's inalienable right to live and to be free from all abuse and neglect urgently needs to be codified in law with severe penalties imposed upon all violators.

Secondly, the despicable practice of whereby owners, veterinarians, and the operators of shelters are allowed to kill off cats simply because they have either grown old, are sickly, or their presence is no longer desired must be outlawed. C'est-à-dire, the right of cats like Harvey, Alfie, and Tigger to live must be respected. Even that does not go far enough in that elderly cats deserve far better alternatives than either ending up homeless on the street or dying of hunger and thirst while trapped indoors with the corpses of their owners 

At the moment it is a severe shortage of affordable housing that is the most imminent threat facing all cats but especially elderly ones. With an estimated thirty to forty million Americans facing the prospect of being evicted from their apartments and houses in the coming new year something drastically needs to be done immediately in order to save them and their cats from becoming homeless.

Unfortunately, the recommendations recently put forward by Julie Castle of the Best Friends Animal Society of Kanab, Utah, are so trivial and inconsequential as to be laughable. The sad reality of the dire situation is that nothing short of a gargantuan bailout of renters by the feds and the states is going to make much of a difference. (See NBC-TV, October 28, 2020, "COVID-19 Evictions Means (sic) Cats and Dogs Can Be Separated from Families, Compounding the Loss.")

Even under the best of circumstances cats live such terribly short existences that to shorten their sojourns upon this earth for so much as a second constitutes a crime of epic proportions. Perhaps human nature as a whole is far too base and corrupt for very much to be done about the big picture but individuals hold the power in their hands to make a huge difference in the lives of the cats under their care by changing the way that they view and treat them.

Photos: The Birmingham Mail (Ian), the Basler Zeitung (Susi), Beverley Hume (Ginger), the London Metro (Tilly), Hände für Pfoten (Jeany), Yorkshire Cat Rescue (Harvey), Tierheim Arche Noah (two of the seven cats left homeless in Gotha), The Comet of Stevenage (Alfie), Susann Salzmann of the Nordkurier of Neubrandenburg (Felix and Karin Tietz), Ann Baker (Nighshift), Sylvia Manning (Bear), Facebook (Malaysian white cat), and Bild der Frau (Nana).