Cats are going missing from the middle bench.
While disappearances like this are usually blamed on predators, these cats are turning up in the bushes, sometimes weeks later.
The most recent cat to be discovered—this time at around km 4 on the Wolverine Forest Service Road—was Lucy.
“He’s normally in the house,” says Cheryl Wheaton, Lucy’s owner. “We have a doggy door, but he hasn’t been out forever. He leaves our house and goes and visits the neighbour who gives him treats, then to the next house, where they give him treats. That’s usually as far as he goes.”
This is the second time Lucy has gone missing. She thinks someone is grabbing cats and taking them out of town. “Last time it happens they dropped him at the industrial area,” says Wheaton. “This time, he was gone for 23 days. He was gone through the cold spell. We searched everywhere.”
There was no sign of the missing feline for nearly three weeks, until Justin Kruse posted a photo on Facebook of the cat on the side of the Wolverine FSR.
She suspects Lucy might have found shelter at the camp at km five, or at the hydro plant. “We spent three hours looking for him,” she says. “I was walking through the bushes calling him. When I finally saw him, he just dropped to the ground and cried.”
She says a number of cats have gone missing from the middle bench, where she lives. “Jack, my husband, works for Caribou Road Services. They have found two cats that had been dropped off at the side of the road.”
Keri White knows what Wheaton is going through. Last winter, her cat was also found wandering about the bush. “He was found out at Ridge Rotors,” she says. “I don’t know but I think he might have been held captive. He had been gone for almost a month, and when he was found, after a cold spell, he was emaciated. I don’t think he was out there that long.”
Her cat was found out near the airport. She says she’s one of the lucky ones. She know of at least ten that have gone missing. Some have been found and returned, some, not so much. She says some people have argued that these cats might have taken refuge in the undersides of vehicles and accidentally transported, but she doesn’t believe that. “My neighbor found a cat locked in a kennel under a bridge,” she says. “It had broken teeth from trying to chew through the bars.”
The trouble, she says, is that cats are pests. “I love my cat dearly but they consider everyone’s yards their litter box….I try and keep mine in house but he keeps trying to escape. Once a cat has tasted freedom they do everything they can to sneak out.
“More people need to report these incidents to the RCMP,” she says. “As far as I know I’m the only one to go in and report it.” Indeed, says Madonna Saunderson, spokesperson for the RCMP, “The Tumbler Ridge Detachment has not received any complaints regarding missing pets of any sort in recent history.”
Saunderson says that taking other people’s property, including cats, is theft, and can be prosecuted as such.
For now, Wheaton is just happy to have her cat back. She says she under.stands that some people don’t like cats wandering about town free. “Someone posted on Facebook if they caught a cat wandering about, they’d bring them into the SPCA. That’s fine. But dumping them into the bush? That’s cruel.”
