Tilly Is Returned to Her Owner after a Seventeen and One-Half Year Separation but Their Reunion Is Destined to Be, Sadly, a Brief and Bittersweet One

Tilly Is Still Quite an Attractive Female Despite Being Twenty Years Old

"The Scottish SPCA called me out of the blue asking if I had a cat named Tilly and I was thinking 'I did but ages ago.' The officer said she had her in the back of the van and I was like 'What?' "

-- Kim Collier

In 2004, then twenty-one-year-old veterinary nurse Kim Collier pulled up stakes and relocated from Alnick in Northumberland to Rosewell, eighteen kilometers south of Edinburgh. Along with her on that one-hundred-twenty-eight-kilometer journey she brought her two-year-old tortoiseshell, Tilly.

Four days later, she carelessly allowed Tilly to go outside and that was the last that she ever saw of her. Collier reportedly put up "Lost Cat" posters and scoured the neighborhood but after months of searching she eventually gave up and got on with her life.

She accepted a job at the Pentland Veterinary Clinic in Edinburgh and at some later date she relocated to Danderhall, which is nine kilometers south of Edinburgh. During that time she also adopted at least two other cats.

Tilly was relegated to the distant recesses of her memory and only rarely did thoughts of her long-lost cat  intrude upon the new life that she had forged for herself. C'est la vie! The modern-day world is so busy, stressful, and competitive that it seldom allows the time to even remember, let alone mourn, the loss of a beloved feline companion.

The corrosive effect that a mad, mad world has upon the soul is by no means a new phenomenon, but rather things always have been that way to one degree or another. Its malignant tentacles even extend beyond the grave.

"Local tales and superstitions thrive best in those sheltered, long-settled retreats; but are trampled underfoot by the shifting throng that forms the populations of most our country places," Washington Irving wrote in his famous 1820 short-story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." "Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely time to finish their first nap and then turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have traveled away from the neighborhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintances to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities."

Despite man's attempt to obliterate it, the past never really dies and that petit fait was driven home to Collier in an unexpected way on March 8th. "The Scottish SPCA called me out of the blue asking if I had a cat named Tilly and I was thinking 'I did but ages ago,' she related to the Daily Record of Glasgow on March 10th. (See "Scots Owner Reunited with Missing Cat Seventeen Years after 'Out of the Blue' Phone Call.") "The officer said she had her in the back of the van and I was like 'What?' "

She accordingly was later reunited on that very night with the same tortoiseshell that she had not seen in seventeen and one-half years. Although Collier apparently did not have any difficulty in recognizing her, a far more intriguing question would be whether Tilly remembered her? 

Although it is known that cats that have been AWOL for as long as sixteen years have been found and reunited with their owners, the rescue of Tilly appears to be the lengthiest on record. As microchips continue to not only proliferate in popularity but also to be legally mandated in places like England that record is undoubtedly destined to fall by the wayside one day.

 

This most improbable of all such reunions was made possible due to the convergence of four very important factors. First of all, the microchip that Collier had had implanted in Tilly, most likely shortly after her birth in 2002, was still functioning after all these years.

Secondly, the SPCA not only was willing to scan Tilly but it additionally exercised due diligence by searching thoroughly for the microchip. Thirdly and to its eternal credit, the SPCA does not automatically kill off elderly and disheveled cats upon first sight.

Fourthly, although Tilly had been gone seemingly forever, some tiny part of Collier's soul stubbornly refused to completely let go of her and she therefore had kept her contact information up-to-date in the database to which the chip inside of her was linked. "I didn't think I'd ever see her again," Collier continued to the Daily Record. "I was just changing my microchip details for my other two pets and it was wishful thinking."

Whereas anyone who has ever truly loved a cat would have been overjoyed to learn that she was still live after so many years, Collier's initial reaction was considerably more ambivalent. "It was a very odd feeling, I didn't really know if I was coming or going," she confided to the Daily Record. "My world was turned upside down...but in a good way."

Once she had gotten over the initial shock, she turned her attention to more practical concerns. "I was completely shocked and stressed out when I got the call," she told the Daily Record. "I was thinking about how I was going to look after three pets, but she is my cat, so I'm not going to give her up."

If she had failed to have done so, that likely would have meant the end of the line for Tilly in that very few individuals are willing to adopt an elderly cat, let alone one that is as far over the hill as she. Her only conceivable hope therefore would have rested with the SPCA and even it likely would have been forced into agreeing to foot the bill for her veterinary care before anyone would have agreed to have adopted her.

Tilly Has Been Relegated to a Cage at Pentland

Even though it could be argued with some persuasion that those owners who lose cats are guilty of negligence and therefore should welcome an opportunity to redeem themselves, that quite often is not the case.  For example, on February 5, 2007 Allegra Strauss of the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick in the state of Victoria acted as if she did not want any part of Marmalade after he turned up following an eleven-year absence.

She even went so far as to openly declare that she would willingly relinquish custody of him if his most recent caretaker were to ask for him to be returned. "I'd hate to think that another family is worried about their missing cat," she said.

In other words, she did not want him back.  Furthermore, given that she had fobbed off his care onto a friend by the time that had disappeared, she likely never wanted him in the first place.

It is not known what ultimately became of him but he surely is long dead by now. (See Cat Defender post of February 16, 2007 entitled "Marmalade Receives a Tepid Homecoming After Having Been Missing for Eleven Years.")

In 2015 another Australian cat, this time around a handsome sixteen-year-old male named Tigger, mysteriously turned up in, of all places, Laurelvale in Northern Ireland and although his original owners were notified they did not reclaim him. That in turn opened the door for Cats Protection to kill him which it wasted little time in doing. (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.")

In 2020, Amy Davies of Rochdale in Greater Manchester turned her back on her beautiful tortoiseshell, Georgie, after she was recovered twelve years after having gone missing. (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 Alive but Her Former Owner Does Not Want Any Part of Her.")

In an about-face to how miserably that it had treated Tigger, Cats Protection jumped into the breech so cruelly vacated by Davies and not only successfully treated Georgie's Hyperthyroidism but also placed her in a new home. (See Cat Defender post of December 27, 2020 entitled "Georgie Finally Finds a New 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 2017, Rachel Wells of parts unknown in the West Midlands and who, like Collier, also works as a veterinary nurse, was presented with an opportunity to to retake custody of her brown and white tom, Snitch, who had disappeared in 2003 but she demurred. Instead, she left him to languish at the Black Country Living Museum (BCLM) in Dudley under the care of janitor Roger Colbourne who at that time claimed to have loved him dearly.

When he suffered a stroke in January of 2019, Colbourne cruelly deserted him and when he suffered a second one in April of that year the BCLM had him killed off. (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.")

On  February 21, 2021, a brown female named Brandy, who had disappeared while still a two-month-old kitten in 2005, was found in Palmdale. Even so, her owner, identified only as a computer technician named Charles from somewhere in California's San Fernando Valley, did not want her back.

Rather, he fobbed off her care onto an unidentified sister. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 26, 2021, "Cat That Vanished Fifteen Years Ago Is Reunited with Owner.") 

Only recently, an eighteen-year-old gray tom named Ritz turned up at the Lums Pond Animal Hospital in Bear, twenty-three kilometers south of Wilmington in the state of Delaware, where an implanted microchip eventually led to the discovery that he had disappeared from the nearby home of Jason McKenry on June 14, 2006. Although McKenry seemed genuinely glad to learn that he as still alive, that did not deter him from fobbing off his care onto his mother-in-law, Caroline Clark, of Odessa, twenty-three kilometers south of Bear. (See The News Journal of New Castle, April 28 2022, "Ritz the Cat Vanished in 2006. Moments Before Being Put Down, Vets Found His Owner.")

It thus would seem fair to conclude that, at least with cats, absence does not necessarily make the heart grow fonder. The attitudes evinced by Strauss, Tigger's former guardians, Davies, Wells, Charles, and McKenry also call into question just how long an diligently they searched for their cats when they originally had vanished.

On the other hand, the obstacles inherent in locating a lost cat cannot in any way be minimalized. (See Cat Defender post of October 5, 2019 entitled "Is Chatting Up Cats in the Neighborhood a Productive Means of Locating One That Has Gone AWOL? Some Individuals in Japan Swear That It Is.") 

As far as Tilly is concerned, she owes her last-minute deliverance to a newcomer to Rosewell. "The lady that found her had just moved there and found her covered in mat and she was skin and bone," Collier told the Daily Record. "Nobody in the community had realized that she was missing before."

Tilly and Kim Collier Are Back Together, at Least Temporarily

That last statement is a bit tricky to interpret but if Collier is implying that she believes Tilly spent the last seventeen and one-half years wandering the streets of Rosewell she surely is mistaken given that the life expectancy of homeless cats is estimated to be only three to five years. A far more plausible explanation is that she was taken in by a kindhearted soul almost immediately after she vanished from Collier's domicile.

Furthermore, she likely resided indoors with that individual until either she or he died or relocated elsewhere. That traumatic event likely occurred fairly recently because it seems improbable that a twenty-year-old cat would be able to survive for very long on her own.

It also is entirely conceivable that she could have had multiple caretakers over the course of the intervening two decades. If so, they too surely must have kept her inside.

Instead of being grateful for the kindness shown Tilly by one or more strangers, Collier has heaped nothing but ridicule and scorn upon them. "I could have had her back seventeen years ago if someone had phoned the Scottish SPCA before now," she wasted no time in grousing to the Daily Record. "People think cats are just hanging around and wanting fed but if you see one looking lost or in bad condition it's important to call it in."

 

Although sickeningly typical of the utter nonsense that gushes so freely from the gaping maws of those who practice their mendacity, unchecked greed, and rabid ailurophobia in service of the despicable veterinary medical profession, such gratuitous advice is so crazy and irresponsible that it could not possibly emanate from anyone who either truly cares about cats or has so much as a scintilla of intelligence. First of all, the vast majority of cats in this world, both housed and unhoused, are neither microchipped, collared and tagged, nor tattooed. 

As a consequence, the only thing that those cruel individuals who rat them out to the authorities are accomplishing is initialing their death warrants and considering the millions of cats that those in power already round up and exterminate every year they most assuredly do not need any help from nosey-Parkers within the community. (See Cat Defender posts of June 5, 2007, October 23, 2010, and January 11, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The RSPCA's Unlawful Seizure and Senseless Killing of Mort Leaves His Sister, Mindy, Brokenhearted and His Caretakers Devastated," "The RSPCA Steals and Executes Nightshift Who Was His Elderly Caretaker's Last Surviving Link to Her Dead Husband," and "A Deadly Intrigue Concocted by a Thief, a Shelter, and a Veterinary Chain Costs Ginger the Continued Enjoyment of His Golden Years," plus the Daily Mail, articles dated December 30, 2012, November 6, 2014, and March 28, 2016 and entitled, respectively, "Revealed: RSPCA Destroys Half of the Animals That It Rescues -- Yet Thousands Are Completely Healthy," "RSPCA Forced to Apologize for Wrongly Putting Down Cat Belonging to Family It Accused of Cruelty in Bungled Prosecution," and "RSPCA Killed a Cat Having Long Hair -- Then Tried to Prosecute Its Owner for Cruelty," The Chronicle of Chester, August 11, 2016, Distraught Saltney Family Blast (sic) RSPCA after Their Cat as Put Down," and Kent Online, August 13, 2016, "Heartbreak for Larkfield Family after Cat Is Put to Sleep Without Their Knowledge.")

Anyone who truly cares about footloose, injured, and elderly cats should be willing to take them home and to pay for their sky-high veterinary treatment. Otherwise, people should mind their own bloody business and keep their lying tongues and filthy hands off of cats. The authorities never can be trusted under any circumstances and their mere existence is both anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic.

Secondly, implanting a microchip inside of a cat is by no means a sure-fire way of protecting it. For instance, most shelters in the United States think so little of members of the species that they, reportedly, seldom even bother to scan the cats that they impound. That is just one more rather poignant example of the second-class status that they have been assigned by shelters, Animal Control officers, veterinarians, and others who, by contrast, would never ever think of treating dogs so shabbily.

Even when shelters have allegedly searched for microchips, they sometimes have come up empty-handed. For example, on November 13, 2017 the Animal Rescue League (ARL) of Berks County in Birdsboro, seventy-nine kilometers northwest of Philadelphia, killed off a cat named Diddy that was owned by Cody Lesher of Fleetwood, twenty-seven kilometers north of Birdsboro, even though he was chipped.

Even more outrageously, Diddy had been adopted from the ARL which, presumably, also had microchipped him. Like so many other cats that are routinely killed by shelters and veterinarians, Diddy had been stolen by one of Lesher's neighbors and then given to the ARL in order to be killed.

Since it does not take its solemn obligation to thoroughly scan all the cats that it impounds seriously, in spite of raking in a pretty penny by peddling microchips to naïve owners, it is not surprising that the ARL feels the same way about collars and tags. For instance, a month before it whacked Diddy it killed a young child's collared, and presumably tagged, cat. (See WCAU-TV of Philadelphia, December 15, 2017, "Animal Shelter Euthanizes Man's Cat after Failing to Find Microchip.")

In January of this year, forty-year-old Rachel Lawrence of Braintree in Essex was speaking on the telephone to an unidentified veterinarian who was treating her eleven-year-old cat, Torvi, when she accidentally overheard a familiar meowing in the background. Quite certain that the crying was coming from her two-year-old cat, Barnaby, who had been missing for eight months, she asked the vet about that cat.

Her very legitimate concerns were dismissed out of hand by the practitioner who told her that the cat she had overheard was a stray that had been brought in a week earlier. Much like mothers with children, most women have especially keen hearing when it comes to recognizing the voices of their cats and dogs and Lawrence ultimately was proven to have been correct and she eventually was able to have regained custody of Barnaby.

Her success, however, was not due to the microchip inside of Barnaby which had not been "done properly." The English media are silent on this issue but presumably Barnaby's malfunctioning microchip had been implanted by the same veterinarian who later had impounded him but, like ARL with Diddy, did not even recognize him.

Unless one is a believer in coincidences, Barnaby likely also did his part by using his keen hearing in order to recognize his mistress's voice and that is why he commenced meowing so loudly at that opportune moment. (See the BBC, January 17, 2022, "Braintree Missing Cat Found after Owner Hears Meows on Vet's Phone" and the Essex Chronicle, January 18, 2022, "Essex Mom Reunited with Cat Missing for Eight Months after Recognizing Meow over Phone.")

Whether it is a shelter, a veterinarian, or some other public agency that does the implanting, mistakes are fairly common and it therefore would be a good idea for cat owners who insist upon relying upon microchips to either purchase a scanner or to have their pets' chips checked periodically by either a veterinarian or a shelter in order to verify that they are still functioning properly. (See Cat Defender posts of April 28, 2016 and June 23, 2016 entitled, respectively, "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" and "The State of North Carolina's Veterinary Division Is Covering Up a Savage Beating Dished Out to Cooper at the Rowan County Animal Shelter During the Course of a Microchipping Fiasco.") 

Tilly Was Shaven, Most Likely for Surgery

Earlier in May of 2008, a cat-hating neighbor of Jacqueline Bruno of Mobile stole her beloved companion, Hello, and took him to a shelter which promptly killed him off less than sixty minutes later. Like Diddy, Barnaby, and countless other cats, he too had been microchipped but it is not known if the shelter even bothered to scan him. (See WALA-TV of Mobile, May 14, 2008, "Cat's Microchip Didn't Save It from Being Euthanized.") 

It therefore is not merely rescue groups, such as the RSPCA, who earn a profitable living by stealing and executing other people's cats, but private individuals as well. Such criminal behavior is particularly widespread among ornithologists, wildlife biologists, gardeners, PETA, and other assorted cat-haters. 

Consequently, those individuals who choose to rely upon the goodwill of members of the public in order to return their errant cats are playing Russian roulette with their lives. (See Cat Defender posts of June 15, 2006, March 9, 2007, October 30, 2006, and August 19, 2010 entitled, respectively, "A Serial Killer on Long Island Traps His Neighbors' Cats and Then Gives Them to a Shelter to Exterminate," "A Long Island Serial Cat Killer Is Guilty of Only Disorderly Conduct, a Corrupt Court Rules," "A Collar Saves Turbo after He Is Illegally Trapped by Bird-Loving Psychopaths," and "Music Lessons and Buggsey Are Murdered by a Cat-Hating Gardener and an Extermination Factory Posing as an Animal Shelter in Saginaw.") 

Thirdly, implanted microchips 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.")

Fourthly, the best reason for avoiding microchips is that they do not afford cats any protection whatsoever against their myriad of mortal enemies, both human and animal. (See Cat Defender post of May 25, 2006 entitled "Plato's Misadventures Expose the Pitfalls of RFID Technology as Applied to Cats.")

In spite of all of those drawbacks, Collier pressed on with her propaganda offensive. "This (her reunion with Tilly) happened because I kept my microchip details up-to-date and a kind member of the public realized that she was lost and in poor condition," she declared March 8th on the Facebook page of the Pentland Veterinary Clinic.

In her eagerness to shill for her profession and shelters, she has overlooked the problem, albeit rare, of database administrators who refuse to cooperate in the return of cats to their rightful owners. (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.")

Finally on this subject, the mere fact that so many of these miraculous reunions have come so late is a pretty good indication that neither the goodwill of the public nor the due diligence of veterinarians and shelters should be relied upon too heavily. Even more shockingly, the number of cats that have been failed by their microchips, such as Diddy, Hello, and Barnaby, surely must be astronomically high.

When all is said and done, there really is not any viable substitute for owners who are willing to take their cats' security seriously. Instead of maligning the public, it does not appear that Collier has anyone other than herself to blame for Tilly's disappearance.

In the posting on Facebook cited supra, she claims that Tilly "got out" four days after she had relocated to Rosewell and that could mean either that Collier let her out or that she had done a runner. In either case, as a veterinary nurse she should have been well aware of the pitfalls inherent in changing houses with a cat.

As an old Sprichwort maintains, dogs belong to people but cats belong to places. There accordingly is always the risk that an uprooted cat will attempt to return to its old home at the first opportunity to do so that it is given.

Some folks therefore recommend that cats be denied access to the great outdoors for at least six months following their relocation but even that length of time is not always sufficient. Whether or not a cat will freely choose to remain with an owner at a new location depends in large part upon how closely the pair have bonded. Consequently, the old Sprichwort does not always hold true.

Before allowing a cat out in a strange neighborhood, it would be a good idea for owners to walk the streets all the while keeping an eye out for, inter alia, dogs, both leashed and unleashed, wild animals, such as skunks, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, and fishers, cats in gardens, Animal Control officers, and trappers connected to TNR colonies. It additionally is important to quiz sellers and realtors before either buying or renting a house concerning how that cats are treated in the neighborhood.

Sometimes an online search can uncover incidents of cruelty to cats. It additionally is important to be on the lookout for municipal ordinances that mandate that cats must be licensed and can only be allowed outdoors if on leashes.

Often municipalities that have enacted such draconian ordinances, such as North Sioux City, freely engage in even far more heinous offenses against members of the species. (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.") 

Being exceedingly clever and sneaky, those individuals and organizations that steal, abuse, and kill cats are extremely difficult to apprehend and even on those rare occasions when they are caught, usually flagrante delicto, jurists steadfastly refuse to punish them. Moreover, it is almost impossible to recover cats that have been, either intentionally or accidentally, spirited out of a neighborhood or seized and then permanently locked up indoors.

As for how long and hard that Collier searched for Tilly, only she knows the answer to that question and hopefully her conscience is clear. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that she went to the herculean effort that Lee Andrews and Hannah Temlett on Denbury, near Newton Abbot, in Devon did after their cats, Bob and Bea, disappeared in April.

Tilly Should Not Be Killed Under Any Circumstances 

Specifically, they paid the Royal Mail £3,000 in order to deliver twenty-eight-thousand leaflets to every home and business within a thirteen kilometer radius of Denbury. The additionally are offering a £5,000 reward for the return of their cats.

Unfortunately, at last word Bob and Bea were still missing. (See the BBC, May 18, 2022, "Devon Family Prints Twenty-Eight-Thousand Mailshot Leaflets to Find Cats.")

As heart-warming and uplifting as Tilly's fairy-tale victory over outrageous misfortune has been, there is considerably more to her story and it is not very pleasant. "She sadly has a bladder tumor, so she won't be with us for long...," is how that Collier broke the heartbreaking news March 8th on Facebook. "...but at least she will live out her years being properly cared for..."

The prognosis for Tilly is indeed bleak given that veterinarian Jeffrey Philibert estimates that the life expectancy for cats suffering from bladder cancer is only a few weeks to slightly more than a year. (See PetPlace.com, July 2, 2015, "Overview of Feline Urinary Bladder Cancer.")

Survival rates depend upon the location of the tumors, the extent of the disease, treatment, and metastasization. Symptoms of the disease include difficulties urinating, defecating, and breathing as well as fits of coughing and an intolerance to physical exertion.

The treatment options available to Tilly are pretty much the same as those that are offered to all cancer patients whether they be cats or humans and they include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and such prescription NSAIDs as piroxicam (Feldene®) but even it is only twenty-five per cent effective. Although Collier has not publicly specified which option she has chosen, photographs of a shaven Tilly wearing a sweater would tend to indicate that she has chosen to go the surgical route.

Although the cause of bladder cancer in cats is ideopathic, Philibert lays the blame on flea and tick treatments, mosquito sprays, and cyclophosphamide, a drug used to treat, ironically, cancer and certain immune system ailments. When ingested, it is metabolized into a carcinogen called acrolein which is then excreted in the urine.

Collier initially refused to take Tilly home with her but instead left her at the Pentland Veterinary Clinic. "All the staff here are so nice and have taken her under their wing," she told the Daily Record. "She's got jumpers to keep her warm and gets to come into the office. She's very spoiled."

Although there is not any known reason to suspect that Tilly is not receiving the best veterinary care available, it nonetheless is troubling that of the eighteen practitioners at Pentland six of them are shown on its web site holding dogs but none of them are pictured with cats. The postings on its Facebook page are likewise mostly about dogs. This same disturbing situation exists at just about all surgeries and therein lies a not too subtle clue as to just how little regard that the vast majority of veterinarians have for cats.

"The main thing is she is safe and the vets are giving her amazing care," Collier summed up to the Daily Record. "We know the outcome is not great but I just want to make her comfortable."

More than two and one-half months have been struck off the calendar since the world learned of Tilly's existence and her uphill struggle to survive but yet no additional information about her has appeared in either the Scottish press or on Pentland's Facebook page. Although Collier earlier had expressed a desire to bring her home with her and to integrate her with her other cats, it is not known if she followed through with those plans and, if so, how that the three of them are getting along. Tilly accordingly could still be at the surgery or, worst of all, long dead by now.

The greatest fear is that her cancer has metastasized to the point that it cannot be successfully treated and that Collier, who never has been all that keen about having Tilly back in her life, will elect to take the cheap and easy way out by having one of her colleagues kill her. There really is not any valid reason for her to commit such an abhorrent crime, however.

First of all, as an employee of Pentland she undoubtedly is being charged either very little or nothing at all for Tilly's expensive treatment. Even if she were being charged out the nose that still would not constitute a valid excuse for killing her.

In fact, many cats that veterinarians refuse to treat and accordingly insist upon killing have been known to live for many months and, in some cases, years thanks to home care alone. Moreover, some of them have made complete recoveries and returned to their normal selves.

That is not meant to imply in any way that there is a miracle cure in Tilly's future, but rather only to point out that no owner really knows what tomorrow has in store for her cat unless she is first willing to choose life over expediency and convenience and thus to allow her to complete her brief journey on her own terms. Veterinarians, on the other hand, care only about making a fast and easy buck and killing cats is sans doute a proven method of accomplishing that ignoble goal.

In life, an individual should be willing to take the rain with the sunshine as well as the tears with the laughter and that most definitely includes remaining faithful to her cat by going the last heartbreaking miles with her. Doing so is undeniably painful but so, too, is much of life.

Photos: Facebook (Tilly) and Tag24 of Dresden (Tilly in a cage, with Collier, shaven, and bandaged).

Mama Kitty Is Looking for Love, Protection, and a Home but All of Those Valuable Commodities Are Permanently Out of Stock with the Stingy Shopkeepers at Kibby Cobb Plaza

Mama Kitty Alone as Always in a Hostile World

"We hope with love and food that she will love us enough to let us pet her."

-- Michelle Moore

It is extremely difficult for homeless cats to make it in this world. For in addition to their daily struggle in order to procure food, water, and shelter, there are far too many other animals as well as humans who are intent upon doing them bodily harm.

Even those individuals who tramp in and out of their lives from time to time offering them temporary succor more often than not do them far more harm than good. After all, man is such a selfish egotist that even his rare displays of altruism are seldom much more than clever disguises for his far more sinister motives. 

A familiar refrain of that old song and dance is currently being played out in Jackson, a small town of thirty-three-thousand residents located sixty-four kilometers west of Ann Arbor. The protagonists in this cruel charade are a lovely orange and white female with green eyes known as Mama Kitty and the moneygrubbing merchants at Kibby Cobb Plaza on busy Kibby Road.

The exact dates are far from clear but as best it could be determined this drama began to unfold about nine years ago when Michelle Moore opened a home goods' store known as Not So Shabby, Oh! So Chic at the strip mall. It soon thereafter became her practice to store her clearance furniture out back so that customers could browse through it at their leisure while being out of her hair at the same time.

One day "years ago," one of them made an amazing discovery. "She said, 'Do you know you have kittens back here?' " the browser said to Moore according to The Citizen Patriot of Jackson on April 3rd. (See "Meet the Cat Who's Claimed the Hearts of Kibby Cobb Plaza Business Owners.")

As things  turned out, what the customer had stumbled onto was Mama Kitty and an undisclosed number of her kittens living in what is believed to have been a chest-of-drawers. "That confirmed to me that she had been living here, and we moved into her home," Moore told The Citizen Patriot.
 

If that account of events is accurate, that would make Mama Kitty about ten years old. To her credit, Moore did not rat her out to the authorities in order to have her removed and eradicated but rather she and her fellow retailers pooled their resources and had her sterilized. Although it never has been independently verified, the shopkeepers allegedly procured homes for her offspring.

 

Although a decade is a relatively long time ago, not much has changed since then. Moore and the proprietors of Prestige Hair Design, Kibby Cobb Liquor and Deli, and the Ironbark Brewing Company still are taking turns buying Mama Kitty food and tossing her table scraps. They also sometimes put out a heating pad for her in the winter and a local student has donated a box for her but that is about all the care and attention that she receives from them.

Despite the meagerness of her efforts, Moore would like the world to believe that she is a big shot philanthropist on the order of George Soros. "I'm a huge animal lover," she crowed to The Citizen Patriot.

"I don't  know how I couldn't take care of her."

At least Haley Applegate of Prestige Hair Design appears to take her obligations to Mama Kitty somewhat seriously. "Sometimes she will come into the break room and I'm like, "Oh, that means she hungry," is how that she acted out her role in this affair to The Citizen Patriot. "And when Mama Kitty comes to my door, I feed her."

There are indications, however, that the nickel and dime merchants are wearying of the burden and in that light Moore already has announced plans to install a mailbox at the plaza so that shoppers can drop off food and letters for Mama Kitty. "That's my favorite part, that we all work together to make sure she has her food, water, and needs (met)," Applegate added to The Citizen Patriot.

According to Moore, Mama Kitty is still a bit shy but she usually will stop by in order to chew the fat with store owners. "We hope with love and food that she will love us enough to let us pet her," she summed up to The Citizen Patriot. "She's part of the family here. She's really well-known."

Whereas that may be true to a certain extent, Moore and her fellow merchants talk and act as if she were a down-at-the-heel poor relation who is scarcely tolerated. First of all, neither she nor her fellow shekel chasers has been willing to provide her with a proper name.

Instead, they have resorted to disparagingly calling her "The Shabby Kitty" as well as the noncommittal "Kibby Cat" in addition to Mama Kitty. Bestowing a proper and befitting name upon a cat not only demonstrates a degree of genuine affection but ownership as well whereas refusing to do so indicates that she, despite Moore's assertion to the contrary, is still considered to be a rank outsider even after all these many years and most definitely not a bona fide member of the family.

Secondly, it is downright shameful that the merchants are so cheap that they begrudge Mama Kitty her meager rations. Even if they were willing to feed her Fancy Feast® three times a day that would only set them back a measly US$21 a week while a daily saucer of milk would add less than US$5 to that already insignificant total. 

The merchants' niggardliness is reminiscent of the behavior of a miser that John Lennon once described in the following unflattering terms:

"Mean Mister Mustard sleeps in the park

Shaves in the dark to save paper

Sleeps in a hole in the road

Saving up to buy some clothes

Keeps a ten bob note up his nose

Such a mean old man."

Thirdly, it is beyond disgraceful that none of them have been willing to take Mama Kitty home with them to live. That glaring oversight additionally casts doubt on their declaration that they found homes for her kittens. It is way too late for them to do anything about the kittens now but there is still enough sand left in the hourglass for them to do right by Mama Kitty by getting her off the street and into a safe and loving home.

Kibby Cobb Plaza Is Located on Busy Kibby Road

Fourthly, they surely must be aware that they are playing Russian roulette with her fragile life by so stubbornly refusing to afford her any protection at all. At any moment she easily could fall prey to a motorist either in the plaza's parking lot or on Kibby Road, an unleashed dog, wild animals, the elements, or the machinations of an ailurophobe.

In that light, the presence at the plaza of, not one, but two alcohol dispensaries is particularly disturbing in that booze and cats are a bad mix under any circumstances. (See Cat Defender posts of August 31, 2006, January 28, 2008, September 18, 2008, November 10, 2008, November 20, 2008, January 12, 2009,  August 17, 2009, October 30, 2010, January 22, 2011, and April 17, 2017 entitled, respectively, "An Animal Control Officer Goes on a Drunken Binge and Leaves Four Cats and One Dog to Die of Thirst, Hunger, and the Heat at a Massachusetts Shelter," "Hopped Up on Vodka and Pot, a Trio of Miscreants Taunted Tatiana Prior to the Attacks That Led to Her Being Killed by the San Francisco Police," "A Drunken Brute Beats, Stabs, and Then Hurls Fifi to Her Death Against the Side of a House in Limerick," "A London Teenager, Convicted of Killing the HMS Belfast's Kilo, Also Is Unmasked as a Remorseless Liar and a Drunkard," "A Trusting Domestic Cat Has Her Left Ear Blown Off with a Firecracker by Cretins Outside an Irish Bar," "Disoriented and Racked by Excruciating Pain, Seizures, and Infections, Sparkles Loses Her Long Struggle to Live," "America's Insane Love Affair with Criminals Continues as a Drunkard Who Sliced Open Scatt with a Box Cutter Gets Off with Time on the Water Wagon," "A Teenage Wino Who Gunned Down Her Neighbor's Cat, Trouble, with a Crossbow from Her Bedroom Window Cheats Justice," "A Drunken Bum Is Foiled in a Macabre Plot to Make a Meal Out of Kittens, Nirvana and Karma, That He Allegedly Had Run Down Earlier with His Truck," "Colin Sherlock, an Admitted Boozer and Dope Addict, Pulls Out All the Stops in His Unsuccessful Attempt to Torture Roxy to Death," and "As Peat Tragically Found Out, Alcohol and Cats Are Such a Bad Mix That Even Working at a Distillery Can Be Deadly," plus, United Press International, June 28, 2017, "Venkman the Rat-Catching Cat Missing from Chicago Brewery.") 

"I only wish all the drunkards could be put in a lunatic asylum instead of being allowed to run foul of sober people," Anna Sewell astutely pointed out in her 1877 classic, Black Beauty. "If they would break their own bones, and smash their own carts, and lame their own horses, that would be their own affair, and we might let them alone, but it seems to me that the innocent always suffer...If there's one devil that I should like to see in the bottomless pit more than another, it's the devil drink."

Fifthly, Mama Kitty should be allowed to stay indoors at one of the shops at least nights and throughout Jackson's long, cold, and snowy winters where the thermometer stays well below the freezing mark from November until April. Summers are not all that much more conducive to cats living outdoors considering the huge amount of rain that falls between April and mid-October.

At the very least, the shopkeepers ought to be willing to install a cat flap at one of their establishments so as to allow her to come and go as she pleases. Along with doing that they also could set out food, water, and a litterbox for her inside.

Sixthly, whereas the stingy merchants are not about to pony up for Mama Kitty's veterinary care, that most assuredly does not excuse them for completely ignoring her health and well-being. In addition to cutting out the table scraps and feeding her quality canned meats, they need to be brushing her fur every day in order to not only remove loose hairs so as thus to prevent them from being ingested when she grooms herself but much more importantly to remove ticks and fleas as well.

Whereas chemicals should be avoided under all circumstances, various all-natural retardants could be applied to her coat if needed. It also is important that someone wipe off her paws whenever either the shopkeepers or the local road maintenance department puts down chemicals in order to melt snow and ice.

Scrapes, bruises, and scratches need to be cleansed with antiseptics and treated with over-the-counter antibiotics. Also in that regard, an Elizabethan collar is a handy device to have around so as to prevent a cat from scratching at injuries to its neck, face, head, and shoulder areas.

An application of Vicks VapoRub to the outside of a cat's throat, chest, and whiskers can sometimes clear up minor respiratory infections but the best way to avoid such problems is to keep a cat out of the cold as much as is possible. Mama Kitty also probably needs to be vaccinated against rabies, the Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV), and the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) but those inoculations usually require a visit to a veterinarian and the vast majority of them not only hate cats and their owners with a passion but they additionally are incompetent and Shylocks of the worst sort.  

Her caretakers also need to be closely monitoring not only what she eats but also how much. A sudden loss of appetite could signal that something is either sorely amiss with her health or be a harbinger of a dental emergency.

The greatest threat that Mama Kitty is facing, however, is that the shopkeepers will not only be too cheap, uncaring, and lazy to treat her once that she becomes either ill or badly injured but that they will elect to save both money and trouble by having her killed off. They have already trapped her once and robbed her of her ovaries and the next time around they likely will rob her of her precious life.

Owners, fosterers, TNR practitioners, and so-called do-gooders betray their cats and commit such diabolical crimes all the time. (See Cat Defender posts of December 11, 2021, October 23, 2011, and September 28, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Socks, Coors Field's Most Famous Resident Feline, Is Saved from the Gallows by a Pathology Report after She Is Trapped, Misdiagnosed, and Then Unjustly Consigned to Death Row," "A Supposedly No-Kill Operation in Marblehead Betrays Sally and Snuffs Out Her Life Instead of Providing Her with a Home and Veterinary Care," and "Marvin Is Betrayed, Abducted, and Murdered by a Journalist and a Shelter Who Preposterously Maintain That They Were Doing Him a Favor," plus KXAN-TV of Austin, May 4, 2022, "Domino, Cat That Roamed University of Texas Campus for Over a Decade, Passes Away.")

By their words and deeds, Moore and Applegate have more than amply demonstrated that they are primarily concerned with themselves and their businesses and therefore care precious little about Mama Kitty's welfare and happiness. In doing so they have shown once again that man is all about exploiting cats and, worst still, feeling good about doing so to boot.

 

C'est-à-dire, man knows how to take but he is yet to learn the first thing about giving. In that regard, there is not all that much of a difference between abusing and exploiting cats on the one hand and devaluing and ignoring their pressing needs and suffering on the other hand.

Both endeavors are forms of cruelty. "Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it," Mark Twain wrote in his 1896 essay, "The Lowest Animal." "It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals...Man is the cruel animal He is alone in that distinction."

Part of the blame for the shameful neglect that cats such as Mama Kitty are forced to endure rests with the capitalistic media. For instance, The Citizen Patriot fails to mention even one of the many deprivations that Mama Kitty is being forced to endure at the hands of the hard-hearted merchants.

Instead of acting as beacons of truth, justice, and fairness, the media serve as the propagandists for the capitalists, the militarists, and the politicians who stooge for them. In other words, instead of informing and  educating the public, the media cover up the crimes of those who put money in their pockets by purchasing their products and advertising in them. They accordingly seldom do anything that is even remotely beneficial for cats.

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers," Thomas Jefferson opined more than two-hundred years ago and the media's performance has only worsened since then.

In conclusion, it is indisputable that Mama Kitty has suffered enough and that she is richly deserving of a better life, especially now that she is rapidly growing older. Regrettably, with the shopkeepers so unwilling to provide her with that, things likely will, sooner than later, end badly for her.

Photos:  The Citizen Patriot (Mama Kitty) and Google Street View (Kibby Cobb Plaza on Kibby Road).