You need to be vigilant in London especially if you have a purebred cat companion. It’s rare but it does happen: cat abduction with menaces. The criminals know that a cat lover will pay up because they have a strong emotional attachment to their cat.
Also, in England most cat owners let their cats go outside unattended. On this occasion a beautiful blue, female British Shorthair (see above) slipped out the home in North Kensington, London. Not long after her owner, Mr Meadows, 62, had posted fliers publicising that his cat was lost he received a phone call demanding £5,000 for the cat’s return. The criminal sounded menacing.
Later, on receiving a second phone call, the demand was for £2,000. He agreed to pay and Mr Meadows, together with a friend, met three criminals in a car park in Brentwood. At the meeting he managed to renegotiate the ransom money to £1,500.
He has his cat back and he is livid. This was not a case of someone finding a lost cat. This was cat abduction (theft) and a demand for money. He has told the police. What chance they find the culprits? It is a very small chance.
It actually makes me concerned because I live in London and if this happened to me and my cat I’d be very angry and distressed. I don’t know how it would end up.
There is an increased amount of gang crime in England. I believe some of it is due to Eastern European gangs allowed into England under the EU right to freedom of movement rules. Eastern European countries recently joined the EU.
Conversely, in some states of the USA there are environmental-protection laws in place that makes it mandatory to destroy any non-native species of animals being released. And along with these laws it makes it clear that the person “cleaning up” the environmental mess that another person makes by letting those non-native animals roam free, that they can then charge the person releasing those non-native animals any amount of money that they see fit for their time and expenses in having to destroy and dispose of those non-native animals. So not only does the person not get their cat back, but they get charged the cost of having to destroy their free-roaming cat.
It is an interesting law I found when researching why TNR is illegal in so many states. There doesn’t even have to be a bounty placed on cats. Those killing other’s cats can charge them for their time and costs to do so. $1000 per hour should about cover it, don’t you think?
There’s something that doesn’t smack right with this.
Did this beauty sneak out or was she indoor/outdoor. I feel that she must have been allowed out. Only by my experience, strictly indoor cats will stand in the doorway of an open door but never go out.
So, he paid a stiff price to have his purebred returned because the outside world is a dangerous place and he took the risk. Idiot!
The owner states that Maggie slipped out the front door.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/thieves-abduct-north-kensington-familys-cat-and-demand-5000-for-safe-return-10336750.html
She does sound like an especially nervous cat, and if she’s normally indoor only she might have panicked and simply have dashed into someone’s else home if the door was open. Unbeknown to me at the time, that’s exactly what Sophie did when she sneaked outside two days after we moved house. Yet when we’d lived in the flat, she never showed any interest in going out. She could even be trusted to sit by an open front door without ever wanting to cross the threshold. Of course once she’d had that first taste of freedom it was a different matter 😉
The cat Maggie was not stolen, she sneaked out the front door whilst Mr. Meadows and his partner Carol were unloading shopping.
Maggie is described as being timid and “goes bananas when strangers are in the house”, so I hope this whole experience hasn’t left her too traumatised.
Thanks Michele. I suppose therefore the abductors got lucky and found Maggie and demanded money. This then was a one-off casual crime rather than organised crime.
I just hope the story doesn’t give other people ideas or that the culprits don’t try to exploit another pet owner in the same way.
I really wish Mr. Meadows had contacted the police straight away as I’m not hopeful the police will catch the culprits.
Cat thefts have been going on in Britain for ages as you probably know. My mother used to have Siamese cats and I recall one of hers being stolen. It probably will give others ideas but I don’t think it is a very good criminal activity. It is not profitable enough and too uncertain and unpredictable.
If the cat is allowed free access to the outdoors, how do we know she was actually stolen? It could just as easily be that someone found her, saw the posters and an opportunity to exploit the situation financially. That scenario is not uncommon and is why it’s recommended that owners never state the value of any “reward” offered for the safe return of their missing pet.
Something else to bear in mind is that probably only around 10% of cats in the U.K. are pedigrees. Even the untrained eye can usually differentiate between your average moggie and a pedigree, even if you don’t know which particular breed the cat is. Even before the poster went up, whomever found her might have already been considering the idea that the owner would be willing to pay out more money for the safe return of an expensive pet. Whereas most decent minded people would take a suspected lost cat to a vet to be scanned for a microchip.
Missing pets may not generate much interest at the local police station, but blackmail and ransom would. So why didn’t Mr. Meadows contact the police after receiving the first telephone call? Surely the police would have become involved so that they could catch the culprits when the money was being handed over? It’s little use complaining after you’ve handed over the ransom money as the police won’t have nearly as much evidence with which to prosecute the perpetrator(s).
I don’t know if Mr Meadows has cat insurance, but I wonder if the policy covers situations like this?
That makes sense. However, f they took it from the home, it seems there would have been signs that someone had been inside, even if they got in through an unlocked door. Probably easier to take from a yard. The abductors would have to watch for the guardian to leave, so that also would have taken some time. If done during the day, they’d risk being seen by neighbors, unless there weren’t any close by. Night time would have been best, but I didn’t read any details. Did the guardian report any?
This is something I haven’t heard of locally, but it must happen. That’s a beautiful picture of the cat.
Not everyone would be able to pay a ransom, so I wonder if the poster had a large “REWARD” listed. The abductor probably finds, and somehow captures wandering kitties, then looks for posters. The most appealing ones would indicate a reward.
My kitty is so timid that she’d never go to anyone willingly, so they’d have to drop a net to capture. I don’t have much money to reward the “finder”, but would offer something.
Another good reason to keep her in….
As you say it is hard to know how the cat was abducted. I am not sure the cat was lost. He/she could have stolen from the home or the garden of the home. Criminals won’t rely on finding a lost cat. It may take them days to find a cat advertised as lost. That is too uncertain for criminal activity unless they took a chance and got lucky. I am not sure but it seems strange.