Mocha Is Saved from an Almost Certain Death at a Shelter by the Enduring Love and Compassion of Her Former Owner Who Had Not So Much as Laid Eyes on Her in Thirteen Years

Mocha Is Reunited with Her Owner after a Long Separation

 

"The manager took her to the back stray hold room and showed her the kitty in question, and the woman was quickly moved to tears."
-- Tooele City Animal Shelter

In a world that is seemingly brimming over with owners who not only either purposefully abandon or negligently lose possession of their loyal feline companions but even more inexcusably do not want any part of them once they miraculously turn up alive years later at shelters and surgeries, it is is always heartening to learn of the existence of those rare souls whose hearts beat to the tune of an entirely different drummer. An unidentified young woman from parts unknown in Utah who not only did not hesitate to take back her long-lost cat, Mocha, but who also was moved to tears when she finally was reunited with her after so many years is a rather poignant reminder that such outstanding and caring individuals do in fact still exist in this callous world. 

The story of Mocha's incredible survival began to unfold during the middle of last July when the elderly tortoiseshell was surrendered to the Tooele City Animal Shelter (TCAS) in the city of the same name, fifty-five kilometers south of Salt Lake City. After a routine scan of her had revealed the existence of an implanted microchip, the administrators of the database to which it is linked up to were telephoned and the father of the owner subsequently contacted on July 17th.

Whereas many individuals would not have wanted to have been even bothered, the man drove without hesitation to the shelter where he did not have any trouble in recognizing Mocha. He then promptly telephoned his daughter who is now living elsewhere but, presumably, somewhere nearby in Utah.

"An hour later, a very excited and shocked woman turned up at the shelter and said her parents (had) called her about the cat," TCAS related to KTUV of Salt Lake City on July 19th. (See "Teen Girl Who Lost Her Cat More Than a Decade Ago Gets an Unlikely Reunion.") "The manager took her to the back stray hold room and showed her the kitty in question, and the woman was quickly moved to tears."

As it soon was learned, Mocha had disappeared some thirteen years previously when her owner was still in high school. Yet in spite of all the missing years, the young woman's love for her had not dimmed the least little bit.

"She knew that this was her cat that went missing when she was a little girl," TCAS continued. "She was shaking all throughout the reclaim process, and just overall in shock."

When Mocha disappeared her owner had been so devastated that she did not want to even attend school. She searched high and low for her for an extended period of time without so much as an iota of success. Mocha had seemingly disappeared into thin air.

She finally was forced into concluding that her beloved cat had been either run down and killed by a motorist or worse. Since time and tide waiteth for no one, she ultimately was forced into getting on with her life and to that end she finished school, got married, had children and relocated to another city where she acquired new pets, including at least one cat.

So, where had Mocha been all that time? The entire story likely never will be known but she apparently had been sleeping rough.

The unidentified woman who earlier had dumped her at TCAS claims to have been feeding her for the past ten years but that is all. She accordingly never saw fit to either offer her a home, protection from her species' sworn enemies, or to provide her with any form of veterinary care.

How that anyone could have so nakedly exploited a cat for her own selfish, egotistical reasons without once endeavoring to take her out of the dire straits that she was in stupefies the mind. Even more reprehensible was the woman heartless decision to have dumped Mocha at TCAS where she very easily could have been promptly exterminated.

Regrettably, such exploitative, callous, and uncaring behavior on the part of so-called cat fanciers is the rule rather than the exception. For example, when Ann and Mike Hirz of Poynette, Wisconsin, decided in late March of 2009 to relocate to Green Valley, Arizona, they cruelly left behind Domino, a beautiful five-year-old tuxedo with captivating green eyes, to fend for herself during the state's unforgivably cold and snowy winters.
 
They made that heartless decision in spite of the fact that they had been feeding her for four years. Worst still, even a last-minute intervention on the part of the The Fates proved to have been insufficient in order to have dissuaded them from going through with their dastardly deed.

That occurred when Domino unwittingly became trapped inside a shipping crate and therefore made the trip with them to Green Valley after all. Even then her presence was not discovered until eleven days and two-thousand miles later and that was made, not by the Hirzes, but rather a workman who was installing drapes at their new abode. A charge of negligently forcing her to go without food and water for such an extended period of time, not to mention nearly frightening her to death, can thus be added to their already lengthy rap sheets.

Whereas halfway caring individuals would have been grateful to The Fates for providing them with a second chance to have done right by Domino, that was anything but the attitude taken by the Hirzes. Readily demonstrating that their heads were every bit as ossified as their hearts, they instead readily seized upon the convenient advice proffered up to them by Patti Hogan of Paws Patrol in Green Valley and thereby drove Domino back to Poynette where they abandoned her once again.

"It (sic) knows its safety area. It (sic) knows its sources of food and shelter," she told the couple. "This is Domino's best chance of survival."

That is pure baloney! With the Hirzes no longer in the picture, Domino had lost not only her main source of food and water but she no longer even had her safety zone and shelter underneath their porch.

Hogan's cruel and nonsensical advice did serve, however, to take Domino off of her hands and out of Green Valley. If lawful owners and ad hoc caretakers who abandon and kill off their cats can be described as devils, then shelters that egg them on in their treacheries surely must be their imps.

As best it could be determined, no one knows what ultimately became of lovely Domino, but hypothermia, starvation, and death by in desperation licking up either antifreeze or the chemicals that are used in order to melt snow and ice are three rather distinct possibilities. Furthermore, since it is unlikely that she was microchipped, there is not going to be any miraculous rescue story about her for anyone to write. (See Cat Defender post of May 8, 2009 entitled "Domino, Feral and All Alone, Faces an Uncertain Future in Wisconsin Following an Unplanned Trip to Arizona.")

Utah, much like Wisconsin, also experiences rugged winters and once that is taken into consideration along with the difficulties inherent in procuring food and shelter it is nothing short of a minor miracle that Mocha was able to have survived for as long as she did on her own. Although she certainly looks to be healthy enough in the photograph of her that TCAS has released to the public, there is not any way of knowing the toll that being homeless and forced to go without veterinary care for such a lengthy period may have exacted from her and, by extension, reduced her life expectancy.

In addition to those mundane concerns, Mocha had to be constantly vigilant in order to avoid the multitude of both human and animal predators that bedevil the lives of all cats that reside in Utah proper as well as in the fundamentalist Mormon enclaves just beyond its borders. In fact, a good case could be made that the area leads the nation in the number of gruesome and heinous crimes that are committed annually against cats and other animals.

Lovely Domino. Whatever Became of Her?

That is a tricky accusation to maintain, however, in that the area's horrendous record on a host of animal rights issues could be attributable, at least in part, to the willingness of its shelters and media to shine the light of day on such such offenses. For instance, other parts of the nation, such as New York City, California, the south, and midwest, routinely cover up and ignore similar atrocities.

Even once that caveat is taken into consideration, there can be little doubt that most cats would be far better off if they had some means of getting the hell out of Utah and its nearby Mormon enclaves. For example, in 2012 fundamentalists living across the Utah border in Colorado City, Arizona, four-hundred-seventy-nine kilometers south of Tooele, hideously tortured to death a gray-colored kitten named Thomas. (See Cat Defender post of August 8, 2012 entitled "Polygamists Condemn Thomas to a Long and Excruciatingly Painful Death by Burying Him Up to His Tiny Neck Inside a Post Filled with Wet Concrete.")

Later on May 21, 2018, a black domestic cat named Lucky from Hildale, Utah, two kilometers northeast of Colorado City, was left paralyzed when she was shot in the neck with a bullet that lodged in her spine. A few days later on May 26th, a large brown and white dog named Bullet, also from Hildale, was shot in the side with a bullet but survived. (See the St. George News, June 6, 2018, "Hildale Pet Shootings Prompt Group to Offer $7,000 Reward, Seek End to Abuse.")

On June 21st of last year, an orange and white cat named Sterling was tied up and set on fire in Hildale but miraculously survived. (See the St. George News, July 22, 2020, "Humane Society (of Utah) Offers $5,000 Reward for Information Regarding Cat Set on Fire," KUTV of Salt Lake City, July 26, 2020, "Utah Cat Set on Fire, Tortured Sparks Manhunt for Abuser," and ABC-TV4 of Salt Lake City, July 27, 2020, "Utah Cat Set on Fire Faces Infection, Long Road to Recovery, Shelter Says.")

Later on September 23rd, an unidentified cat was shot in the eye by an assailant armed with a blow dart in  Utah Lake State Park near the Provo Municipal Airport. It lost the eye.

A week later on September 30th another cat was found in the same area with a lung that had been pierced with another blow dart. It additionally was suffering from an injured front leg that had to be amputated. (See KUTV of Salt Lake City, articles dated October 1, 2020 and October 8, 2020 and entitled, respectively, "After Two Cats Shot with Blow Dart (sic), Provo Police Ask for the Public's Help" and "Four-Thousand-Dollar Reward Offered for Finding Person Who Injured Two Cats with Blow Darts.")

Utahans additionally make a mint by ruthlessly slaughtering coyotes en masse for their valuable pelts. One consequence of their unchecked greed, violence, and barbarism is that cats often end up being victimized by the leghold traps that they are allowed to get away with indiscriminately setting in urban and suburban neighborhoods. (See Cat Defender post of July 19, 2020 entitled "Beautiful Bobby Is Maimed for Life by a Leghold Trap That Not Only Was Intended for a Coyote but Also Illegally Set Within  the City Limits of St. George.") 

Utahans' insatiable greed also has led them to transmit the COVID-19 virus to at least a quarter of the state's three-dozen mink farms. That in turn has resulted in the premature deaths of at least eight-thousand of the already doomed animals. (See Boise State Public Radio of the Idahoan city of the same name, October 6, 2020, "Thousands of Mink Dead as COVID Outbreak Escalates to Utah Farms.")

Aside from Mocha's indomitable will to live and years of profound suffering, the thing that makes her deliverance so extraordinary is her owner's willingness to have welcomed her back into her life with open arms after such a protracted absence. In the best of all possible worlds, an owner demonstrating her love and compassion for a long-lost feline would not be newsworthy but considering that many individuals do not want any part of their devoted companions even when they finally turn up years later the stellar behavior of Mocha's owner stands out as being the exceptional.

For example, Amy Davies of Rochdale in Greater Manchester refused to take back Georgie after she had been found alive and sleeping rough in the Scottish Highlands last year. That in turn necessitated that Cats Protection's office in Glasgow had to take her in, medicate her numerous ailments that had gone neglected for so long, and to secure a new guardian for her. (See Cat Defender posts of September 8, 2020 and December 27, 2020 entitled, respectively, "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" and "Georgie Finally Finds a Home and a Second Chance at Life after Having Been Cruelly Abandoned and Condemned to Spend a Dozen Hellish Years Homeless in the Wretched Scottish Highlands.")  

Earlier in 2003, a handsome and friendly brown and white tom named Snitch mysteriously disappeared from the home that he shared with nineteen-year-old Rachel Wells in the West Midlands. Fourteen years later in January of 2017 he miraculously turned up at a surgery in the same area where he used to reside with Wells. 

Like Davies, Wells no longer wanted any part of him and cruelly allowed him to go on living as a homeless waif. He supposedly was occasionally fed by seventy-three-year-old maintenance man Roger Colbourne at the Black Country Living Museum (BCLM) in Dudley but that appears to have been the extent of care that he ever received.

In January of 2019, he suffered a stroke but Colbourne, who claimed to have loved him so dearly, wasted little time in deserting him by fobbing off his convalescence upon to the shoulders of an unidentified co-worker. In April of the same year Snitch suffered a second seizure that either claimed his life or, more likely, bestowed a golden opportunity upon his new caretaker at BCLM to have him killed off by an unscrupulous veterinarian.

That was a sad end to a wonderful, albeit sorely neglected, cat. (See Cat Defender post of September 22, 2020 entitled "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.")

Once the unwillingness of Davies, Wells, and their ill-gotten ilk to even acknowledge, let alone to fulfill, their long standing moral obligations to their cats is taken into consideration alongside with the large number of  other owners who routinely abandon, neglect, and kill off their loyal companions, the picture that emerges of the majority of them is not a very pretty one. Rather, it could be argued with some persuasion that with such derelict and morally bankrupt guardians cats scarcely have need of the slanders, libels, and horrific crimes perpetrated against them by ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and PETA.

As far as Mocha is concerned, it looks as if not only her days of sleeping rough are at an end but also her time as an outdoor cat as well.  "Mocha was reclaimed today and is going home with her rightful owner, to be a very spoiled (very indoor) little kitty," TCAS stated July 17th on its Facebook page. "Hopefully, they are (sic) able to make up for lost time, after all these years of thinking Miss Mocha had vanished and likely was deceased."

The shelter then paused in order to pat itself on the back for a job well done. "Today has been a very happy and emotional days for us at the shelter, as we remember why we have the jobs that we do, and we feel that all of the hard work and dedication we put forth every day (and some of the harsh words and backlash we receive for enforcing the animal laws) is worth it when we get to return a pet to their (sic) loving home like we did today," it told KUTV. "We wish Mocha and her owner a happy life together."

If it had had the bon sens to have stopped there that would have been fine but it instead went on to brag about some of its draconian policies and that in turn has exposed it as being less than forthright. First of all, it launched into a campaign in order to peddle more microchips to gullible cat owners.

 

"Without Mocha's chip, she never would have been united with her owners (sic) today," it blowed long and hard to KUTV. Not only is that statement patently untrue but it is simply terrible advice for any shelter to be gratuitously dispensing.

First of all, given that only shelters and veterinarians possess the scanners that are required in order to both locate a well as to decipher the chips, a reliance upon them actually decreases the likelihood that lost cats will be returned to their owners. On the other hand, tattoos and collars with identification tags are immediately recognizable to the naked eye and therefore allow members of the general public to return lost cats to their owners should they be so inclined.

If TCAS and other shelters were convinced of the efficacy of implanted microchips they would purchase scanners and freely distribute them to the public. That is not about to happen, however, because they are too cheap as well as being anything but serious about reuniting lost pets with their owners.

Secondly, microchips do not afford cats so much as an ounce of protection against those humans and animals that are intent upon doing them harm. Furthermore, a blind reliance upon them furnishes owners with an excuse for failing to properly watch out for their safety. (See Cat Defender post of May 25, 2006 entitled "Plato's Misadventures Expose the Pitfalls of RFID Technology as Applied to Cats.")

Thirdly, the chips have been linked to cancer. (See Cat Defender posts of September 21, 2007 and November 6, 2010 entitled, respectively, "The FDA Is Suppressing Research That Shows Implanted Microchips Cause Cancer in Mice, Rats, and Dogs" and "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.")

Mocha and Her Owner on Their Way Home

Fourthly,  veterinarians and others who implant these devices sometimes botch the job. (See Cat Defender post of April 18, 2016 entitled "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.")

Fifthly, in addition to the problems associated with locating and deciphering the chips, not only do guardians often fail to keep their contact information up to date but sometime the administrators of the databases to which the chips are linked up to refuse to cooperate in the return of cats to their rightful owners. (See Cat Defender post of January 25, 2017 entitled "Tigger Is Finally Reunited with His Family Despite the Best Efforts of the Administrators of a Microchip Database to Keep Them Apart.")

Sixthly, the best reason that microchips should be avoided is that the implantation of them is a further step down the road to totalitarianism whereby governmental agencies and despisers of the species are not only going to be able to control the lives of cats but also those of their owners as well. As it always has been the case, the power to control is equivalent to the power to know and the latter is equivalent to the power to destroy. To put the matter succinctly, nothing good has ever come from any nosey-parker.

There is, however, good money in them and that is why shelters, veterinarians, and chip manufacturers are so enthusiastically foisting them upon the public. Cats Protection has already successfully persuaded the House of Commons to mandate the chipping of all cats in England and similar initiatives are under way in the United States. (See The Guardian, December 23, 2020, "Plan for Compulsory Microchipping of Cats in England Amid Boom in Pet Ownership.")

Among its slew of draconian anti-cat regulations, Tooele has a statute that declares anyone who finds a homeless cat must surrender it to TCAS within twenty-four hours or be fined. The shelter will never admit it, but such a law makes in infinitely more unlikely that errant cats will be returned to their rightful owners because those individuals who find them will be afraid to advertise on both lampposts and social media. 

Thankfully, the shelter apparently did not levy a penalty against the woman who kept Mocha alive by feeding her. With there being so little compassion and common decency left in this world, especially in the United States, any organization that penalizes individuals for caring and about cats, other animals, and their fellow man does not deserve to exist, let alone to be allowed to feed like a voracious vulture at the public trough. (See Cat Defender post of February 26, 2007 entitled "Charged with Feeding a Feral Cat Named Fluffy, a Retired Ohio English Teacher Beats the Rap.")  

"This law is in place for situations such as Mocha. If Mocha had been brought to the shelter when she was initially found, she would have been returned to her owner ten years ago," TCAS declared to KUTV in the article cited supra. "Instead she lived a long, risky life out on the street with no where (sic) to call home, and a well-meaning individual feeding her as a stray."

That is another of TCAS's self-serving lies. If Mocha had not been microchipped and it had proven impossible to have located her owner, TCAS likely would have snuffed out her precious life without so much as a second thought. As most individuals fully realize, it is exceedingly difficult for shelters to find homes for elderly cats.

Although the statistics released by shelters are always misleading, elliptical, and difficult to interpret, those released by TCAS on Facebook hardly comport with its highfalutin rhetoric. For example, in 2019 it claims to have impounded one-thousand-one-hundred- ninety-three animals of which it only returned three-hundred-five of them to their owners and adopted out another three-hundred-fifty-seven.

None of its numbers really add up but for whatever it may be worth TCAS claims to have killed one-hundred-fifty-six "ferals," surely all cats, another thirty-two that were either sick or injured, and thirty-two that were deemed to have been dangerous, most likely dogs.

In 2020, it claims to have impounded eight-hundred-twenty animals but to have returned only one-hundred-ninety-five of them and to have found homes for only another two-hundred-sixteen. It additionally claims to have only killed four ferals, seven animals that were deemed dangerous, and five that were either sick or injured. It does, however, make an oblique reference to three-hundred-twenty-six "community cats" which would account for the  sharp decline in the number of "ferals" that it whacked in 2019.

"We are posting this to encourage those of you that find strays and don't want to bring them to the shelter out of fear of what might happen to them, to please reconsider," TCAS nevertheless pleads on Facebook. "Bringing the animals to the shelter is one of the only ways to increase the chances of their owners finding them." 

Its high kill-rate combined with its low adoption and return statistics tell any entirely different story, however, and point to the inescapable conclusion that cats should be kept out of its facility at all costs. That is especially the case if it gases them to death as does the City of West Valley, a scant forty-six kilometers northeast of Tooele.

Most memorably, back it 2011 it gassed a beautiful longhaired black female with luxuriant whiskers named Andrea, not once, but twice. It also tried twice to suffocate and freeze her to death but somehow she managed to beat the rotten bastards at their sadistic game and miraculously lived. Although it is not known how many shelters in Utah use gas chambers in order to expeditiously get shed of their unwanted cats, it is hard to believe that West Valley is the only member of that utterly despicable club. (See Cat Defender posts of November 1, 2011, February 7, 2012, and May 11, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Multiple Attempts Made Upon Andrea's Life Graphically Demonstrate the Urgent Need for an Immediate Ban on the Killing of All Shelter Animals," "Long-Suffering Andrea Finally Secures a Permanent Home after Incredibly Surviving Quadruple Attempts Made on Her Life by an Unrepentant Utah Shelter," and "Andrea's Incredible Survival of Two Gassings Plus Attempts to Suffocate and Freeze Her to Death Makes Her the Overwhelming Choice as Cat of the Year for 2011.")

Even if TCAS should have belatedly embraced TNR, such a policy shift is radically at odds with its declared  war on all homeless cats and those domestics that roam. Every bit as importantly, no one knows how many cats that Tooele's Animal Control officers and its cops are killing far from the prying eyes of the public.

Among the other municipal ordinances that Tooele has adopted in order to penalize pet owners there is one that requires that all cats and dogs over four-months old must be annually licensed and vaccinated against rabies. Their licenses, collars, and identification tags must be worn by the animals at all times and they must be confined when their owners are away from home.

Any municipality  that goes that far out of its way in order to make life so difficult for its feline and canine residents as well as to give their owners a good soaking in the process immediately prompts suspicion that it could very well be up to other devilries as well.

For instance, North Sioux City has similar laws in situ and recently it was revealed that at least one of its police officers was rounding up cats, both those with owners as well as those that were on their own, and shooting them. (See Cat Defender posts of June 14, 2019 and January 2, 2020 entitled, respectively, "A South Dakota Police Officer Is Unmasked, Fired, and Arrested for Shooting Cats but It Is Highly Unlikely That He Will Be Punished or That This Will Be the Last of These Illegal Executions" and "A North Sioux City Police Officer Who Stole and Shot Cats Is Shown Nothing but Love by a Morally Depraved Good Old Girl Jurist Who Is Not Even Fit to Clean Toilets.")

All things considered, Tooele comes across as being little more than a living hellhole for cats and dogs. In that respect, it does not appear to operate all that much differently from the remainder of the state's shelters. 

The lives of animals are cheap everywhere but with most Mormons they count for little or nothing. Mocha survived her trials and tribulations not so much because she had been microchipped, but rather owing to the fact that she had a guardian who not only loved her but was willing to save her from the machinations of TCAS. Even so it never has been disclosed how much it cost her to ransom Mocha off of death row but it seems unlikely that the moneygrubbing animal traffickers at TCAS let her off lightly.

In conclusion, the big talkers at TCAS can lie their ugly little faces off until the cows come home but history has demonstrated that cats do not belong in shelters under any circumstances. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 2011, "Shelter Shock. Cats Can Get Sick from Stress. One Proposed Remedy? Keep Them Out.") 

Moreover, Animal Control officers and cops should not, under penalty of law, be allowed to come within three-hundred yards of any cat. Until the day dawns when shelters, the political establishments to which they belong, and the capitalistic media stop lying about what really goes on inside these animal concentration camps and their surrounding back alleys and open fields, anyone who truly cares about cats should continue to defy their laws and to, above all, refrain from ratting out those that are homeless and domestics that like to roam under all circumstances.

Photos: TCAS (Mocha and her owner) and the Green Valley News (Domino).