David Spratt with Felix the cat who went missing from the Brookdale cattery 18 months ago. Photo / Dean Purcell
David Spratt with Felix the cat who went missing from the Brookdale cattery 18 months ago. Photo / Dean Purcell
A couple is fuming after a cattery owner thought he’d lost their cat - and then didn’t realise a moggie that kept returning to be fed for 18 months was the same one.
They claim the owner even suggested the couple adopt that “stray” cat.
Anne and David Spratt’ssaga unfolded in January last year when they went on holiday and booked their black and white cat Felix into Brookdale Kennels and Cattery in Ramarama.
Felix the cat who went missing from the Brookdale cattery 18 months ago. Photo / Dean Purcell
Two days before they were due home David received a phone call from Brookdale’s owner, Jack Penny, to say Felix had run away. The couple claim he told them of several scenarios of how Felix might have escaped but they are annoyed he hadn’t distributed any flyers of him around the neighbourhood.
“Later in the week we got a call that was full of half-truths, first the cat had been stolen, the cat had another cat put in its place, then all the cats had been stolen by a crazy ex-employee who was a conman ... it was ridiculous,” Anne claims.
The couple say Penny later apologised to David in a text and then suggested he and Anne adopt a “black and white stray cat that was hanging around”.
David Spratt with Felix the cat. Photo / Dean Purcell
“It was our cat he had been feeding and caging for months and he didn’t even know. You would assume someone caring for your cat knows what they look like,” David said.
Heartbroken, the Spratts drove up and down Ramarama Rd for six months looking for Felix. They say they regret not going to Brookdale when Felix first went missing 18 months ago.
“I said, ‘No,’ we want to find our cat,” Anne said.
Brookdale Kennels and Cattery. Photo / Dean Purcell
“Now we are beating ourselves up, why didn’t we go over why? Why? Why? I am wracked with guilt, he had our cat for four months, but we didn’t want to go back to the scene of the loss. If only we’d gone, we would’ve known it was Felix but how did he not know it was our cat he lost?”
A former worker at Brookdale claimed to the Herald on Sunday the cattery was not “luxury” as advertised in her opinion it was run down and in need of better security. In January last year, on her morning shift, the worker noticed the gate behind the cattery appeared to have been tampered with and a cat was missing.
“I narrowed it down to be Felix even though I hadn’t met him before. All I knew from the form was Felix was a domestic short-haired black cat, but it was wrong because Felix is black and white with distinctive markings on its front chest and feet.”
A few days later the worker saw a black and white cat in the paddock. She thought it was too friendly to be a stray or feral.
Felix went missing for 18 months and was seriously injured by a feral cat. Photo / Supplied
“He was cute, I started feeding it because it was getting skinnier and skinnier. A week later my boss put him in a cage, I adopted him as the work cat and called him Loki. All that time I had no clue it was Felix, I thought he was a stray. He would come and go as he pleased.”
They kept feeding the cat until last month when Felix was attacked and was seriously injured with a large abscess on his chest, which was torn open.
She said she took the cat to the vet, who scanned it’s microchip and revealed it was Felix. The vet then called the Spratts to say Felix was there.
“We were like, what?” Anne said.
Chloe, the Spratt’s other cat. Photo / Dean Purcell
“We took him home, but he was in a bad way, his front leg had a gaping wound and his chest had been shaved. He is now FIV positive, which is the feline equivalent to HIV. He’s not allowed outside and technically not allowed to be near any cats.”
Penny called the couple on Friday and in a follow-up email offered to pay the couple’s vet bill.
“As I said on the phone I only found out today that it was your cat that we had adopted some 12 to 15 months ago.
“During the day... he was free to go where he pleased and then came back for food in the evening and we kept him inside in our cattery where he free roamed as he often went out at night and came back with minor injuries.”
He said he thought Felix had become injured after a fight with an opossum that lived in the trees. He said he had been trying to treat him before the worker took him to the vet.
“As this injury happened whilst Felix was in our care I am happy to reimburse the vet bill. Felix turned up many months after he originally went missing and sorry, I did not link the 2 events. The point of this is to apologise and advise that if you send me the vet bill I will reimburse you.”
Anne said it was a miracle Felix is alive.
The Spratts say Felix has had a charmed life even though he’s used up seven of his nine lives. He was six months old when Spratt’s grandson, Oliver, found him abandoned in the bush.
The year before Felix went missing, David saw a dead cat on the side of the road and thought it was Felix. Too upset to tell his wife, he scooped the cat off the road and popped it into the freezer.
“When I arrived home my husband was almost in tears as he was about to tell me about the dead cat he’d found on the road,” Anne said. Then Felix walked out the door, like ‘Hi guys, I’m here.’ Felix is a very lucky cat he’s probably got two more lives left in him.”
Albie, the Spratt's dog. Photo / Dean Purcell
Felix is still adjusting to being back home with Chloe, a Maine Coon cat and Albie, a Jack Russell. He is anxious and barely leaves the house.
The Spratts are considering notifying SPCA about their concerns.
“Life is too short and we don’t want to be retraumatised,” David said.
He said, in his opinion, Brookdale should be shut down and he had a message for Penny
“I think he is a disgrace. We trusted you to care for our cat but you didn’t even know what he looked like.”
Carolyne Meng-Yee is an Auckland- based investigative journalist. She has worked for the Herald since 2007 and was previously a commissioner at TVNZ and a current affairs producer for 60 minutes, 20/20 and Sunday.
