NEWS AND COMMENT-SONOMA, CALIFORNIA: This is one of those classic cases where the people who stole a cat have been identified but they won’t give the cat back. This makes it very difficult for the owner. The police can be unhelpful. Update about 10 days later: the man, Wakefield, who allegedly ‘stole’ the cat has said that he won’t return her because she was neglected. He said that he asked the about the cat and was told that she was a stray and forbidden from entering homes. The cat needed to be rescued he argues. She has become popular with his family. She is now well cared for.
In this instance, the man in question, Troy Farrell, lives in Sonoma, California. He lets his cat go outside a lot it seems to me. And in his neighbourhood, there were Airbnb renters two doors down from his home. Update: it seems that the cat was an outdoor cat essentially and hardly cared for.
Farrell had a very close relationship with his indoor/outdoor cat. Her name is Nubbins. He says that his cat was like a support or therapy animal for him. He would come home stressed and she would jump up onto his lap and de-stress him. This was a close relationship but, and I hate to say this, he did let her go outside an awful lot while he was away during the day and under these circumstances there is always at least the faintest of possibilities that somebody might steal your cat or some harm might come to your cat.
However, that’s not really the point in this instance because he’s convinced that this Airbnb rental couple stole his cat when they left Sonoma and returned to Long Beach.
He was out of town at the time. When he returned home, he received a call from a Long Beach veterinarian after he had scanned Nubbins’ microchip to ID Farell as her owner.
Farrell immediately learnt that Nubbins was 430 miles away in Long Beach which, for him, meant that she had been stolen. And he’s right because the alleged thieves took his cat to their local veterinarian for a health check.
The veterinarian returned the cat to them but asked them to contact Farrell. In other words, he asked them to do the right thing and return the cat. They refused.
This forced Farrell to report the matter to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department. The veterinarian fully cooperated with the police. An investigator said that they had forwarded the case to the district attorney’s office. But Farrell has heard nothing for the past three months.
He said that he misses her terribly and he is tearful about it. He doesn’t have kids and therefore his cat is his child. He insists that they took her and he wants her back. He won’t give up because if the police don’t recover his cat, he is going to hire a private investigator with the assistance of an attorney. He is determined to get her back. He thinks the alleged thieve are evil.
“Those are evil people. Those are people without a conscience, those are people without a heart,” Farrell said
Comment: the alleged thieves must know that they’ve been found out. This is because the veterinarian scanned the microchip and therefore, they know the name and address of the true owner which is Mr Farrell. Therefore, the alleged thieves should know that it is only a matter of time before they get a knock on the door from the police. This is provided the police do their work. As mentioned in the update in the first paragraph, this happened by he won’t return the cat because he said Nubbins was neglected.
When it comes to what they regard as petty matters, the police can be dilatory or worse which appears to be happening in this case.
Report from 19 News.
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