NEWS AND COMMENT-NORWICH UK: This is a very strange story. A family moved into a new home and were surprised to find a young black cat tucked away in a kitchen cupboard. They were unable to keep the cat and contacted the RSPCA. She was checked by the RSPCA and has been named Mistletoe. They hope to rehome her. Although being a black cat it will be harder than usual.
Inspector Amie Pellegrini said:
“The new homeowners really weren’t expecting to find a cat in their kitchen cupboard when they moved in – they must’ve had quite the surprise.
“They were worried as they have dogs of their own and they didn’t want to frighten Mistletoe any more than she must’ve been already.
“She was such a sweet thing – I named her Mistletoe because she was found just before Christmas.”
She is in good health and has an excellent temperament. She loves a cuddle. She will make a wonderful cat companion. She had not been micro-chipped. They don’t know how it happened.
How did it happen?
I can make a suggestion as to how it happened. In fact, I can make a couple of suggestions. The first one is that when the family started to pack up to move Mistletoe became anxious because her territory was being disturbed. She hid in the kitchen cupboard. The family did not see her in there and simply closed the cupboard door afterwards.
Then the family would have been concerned about where she was and that despite efforts to find her couldn’t. They moved without her. That is a possible scenario. However, I think that it is an unlikely scenario. As Mistletoe’s owners, they were the sellers of their home and they would have told the buyers, the people who found Mistletoe, what had happened. They would have told them that they had lost their cat and asked the buyers to look out for her. They didn’t do this.
Another scenario is that they wanted to get rid of her and put her in the cupboard. That sounds very cynical and a bit bizarre but it is a distinct possibility in my opinion.
Moving home is a good opportunity for a family to divest themselves of the responsibility of looking after a domestic cat if they had aspirations to do that. It just depends of course how good a cat caregiver you are and your attitude towards the responsibilities of looking after a cat.
Cats are abandoned. They are taken to shelters and left outside the front or back door in a cardboard box. People in general don’t want to admit to others that they no longer wish to care for a cat. Therefore, they like to abandon cats anonymously. Leaving Mistletoe behind when they moved would meet that objective. I am of course speculating but as they don’t know what happened I think I have a right to do so.
Source: BBC.
