Smart cat put in 'solitary confinement' for freeing other cats in a shelter
“Now he's a star,” wrote AJ Wellington for CNN online on November 13, 2019.
Quilty, a six-year-old cat, has become an internet darling after he was caught freeing himself and other cats from a room in the Friends for Life Animal Shelter in Houston, Texas.
When he was put in solitary confinement, a set of photos of an angry Quilty serving time for his crime was posted online and drew sympathy for the smart, “mutinous” cat.
Wellington quoted Jennifer Hopkins, the shelter’s communications person, as saying "Quilty can be a little difficult.”
Quilty has been in the shelter for only a few months. When he arrived, however, the door of the room where he was kept was always found by the staff to be open and other cats have been out…or led to another room.
"We would come in in the morning and have to collect all 15 of the cats who had had a blast during the night," Hopkins told Wellington.
After reviewing the security footage, they saw the culprit was Quilty. He would jump up and pull the handle down on the door.
“Three times, he managed to Houdini himself and the dozen or so other senior cats to freedom — or, at least, another room,” Wellington wrote.
They put him in a room, alone, while they Quilty-proofed the premises.
“Pictures of the unjust confinement won the little insurgent thousands of fans on Facebook. It may be his resemblance to Smudge, the cat grimacing over a plate of salad that has become a well-worn meme. Feline malcontent, after all, is an eternal spring of humor,” Wellington wrote.
“Whatever the reason, people are now clamoring to adopt the cat that, may we remind you, can open doors and is absolutely not sorry about it. In fact, according to Hopkins, Quilty's nickname at the shelter is ‘spicy a-hole.’ You can draw your own conclusions as to why,” Wellington said.
Despite his antics, Quilty holds a special spot in the hearts of the shelter staff.
Born in 2013, Wellington said Quilty was named after a character from the Vladimir Nobokov novel "Lolita" like the rest of his litter.
“And, like his literary source material, the cat would prove to be problematic,” Wellington wrote.
Hopkins shared that Quilty was adopted when he was a kitten but the owner had to move to a place where cats are not allowed. Quilty was brought back to the shelter.
"We have a lifetime commitment for all of our animals to make sure they're safe. We spend a lot of time and effort on them," Hopkins said.
"After all, we get the weird ones," she added.
The shelter has accepted Quilty's sudden fame on its Facebook page with hashtags like #FreeQuilty and #QuiltyNotGuilty, Wellington said.
Since there are people who love cats like Quilty, he now has a potential adoptive family and is just waiting for the next steps to be completed so he can join his new forever family.
Hopefully, Quilty won’t break out of his new home.
Editor's note: To donate to Friends For Life animal shelter, please go to https://friends4life.org/about/
Senior lady gets 10-day jail time for feeding strays
Despite her age, Nancy Segula was sentenced to 10 days in prison for feeding stray dogs and cats in Ohio, U.S. A.
Segula, 79, lives in Garfield Heights, Ohio, where it is illegal to feed stray dogs and cats under ordinance 505.23, WJW Fox 59 Web reported.
Segula, WJW said, has been feeding the strays for two years.
“It began in 2017 with me feeding stray kitties. I used to have a neighbor that had a couple of cats and he moved away so he left them,” Segula told WJW. “I would always feed them and care for them because I was worried about them and I’m a cat lover. Once my neighbors got upset about it, they called the animal warden."
Segula was already caught in 2017. She got her first citation then.
Since then she has received four citations, the last one requiring her to appear before a magistrate in July this year.
She was sentenced to 10 days in the Cuyahoga County Jail.
“I couldn’t believe what my mother was telling me. She gets 10 days in the county jail, I couldn’t believe it,” Dave Pawlowski, Segula’s son, told WJW. “I’m sure people hear about the things that happen downtown in that jail. And they are going to let my 79-year-old mother go there?”
Segula is expected to report to the county jail on Aug. 11.
“It’s too much of a sentence for me for what I’m doing when there are so many people out there that do bad things.” Segula told WJW.