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TUESDAY 22 January 2019 | Tel: 021 910 6500 | Email: post@peoplespost.co.za | Website: www.peoplespost.co.za
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People’s Post
SALT RIVER
Cat finally back home CARINA ROUX
A
family of Salt River is overjoyed to have their cat back home after he somehow made his way to a school in the northern suburbs. Jade Geland says Steve, who will be six months old on Thursday (24 January), disappeared from her home on Friday 11 January. “I have no idea how he disappeared, but I spoke to some of the vagrants in the area – they said sometimes cats get stolen and are sold in another area.” Last week Monday, at the start of the first full school week an unusual new “learner” showed up in a classroom at Bosmansdam High School in Bothasig. The young ginger and white cat was moved to the comfort of a chair in the principal’s office. “He was very tired,” says principal, Danie Human. As the new learner did not come with a home address and a parent was nowhere to be found, Human decided to post on the Lost and Found Pets Bothasig/ Edgemead Facebook page. Annette Hodgkinson, whose been keeping an eye on a few Lost and Found pages since her cat, Thomas, went missing more than a year ago, was quick to respond. “I called the school to go and have a look.” Sadly it was’nt Thomas, but Annette still volunteered to take the lethargic cat to her vet to have it checked out and to see whether it might have a microchip. No such luck. After a night at the vet (compliments of Annette) it was back to the school on Tuesday. The school psychologist, Melissa Ridgway also returned to the school on Tuesday. Melissa agreed to foster the cat and took him home. He was now named Jack. Annette was back on Facebook late Tuesday night. A post (by a colleague of Jade) made on the Cape Town Lost and Found Page about Steve’s disappearance led to Zaida Khan making a connection with Human’s post. “There was a whole sequence of events’’ which led to the owner, says Annette. Melissa says after she heard about the Facebook notice she spoke to Jade on Wednesday. Melissa asked her husband,Tony, to bring Steve to the school so Jade could come
to the school to fetch him. Jade says after she posted on Facebook and asked a colleague involved with DARG (an animal rescue group) to assist, she received a WhatsApp from Zaida on Tuesday 15 January, with the photo from Human’s post, asking “Is this Steve?” Jade says she recognised a marking on his paw. “Then we tried finding the person who posted it.” She then came in contact with the school. “When
I spoke over the phone to the foster (Melissa), she asked: “You sure it’s Steve?” I said look under his chin, he has a ginger patch. She said, ‘yes, he does!’’ When they returned home on Wednesday, Steve was still a bit traumatised from the whole ordeal, but by Thursday night he was back to his own self, says Jade. Annette was very adamant that Steve should be microchipped and neutered, and Jade says this
Jade Geland being reunited with Steve and Melissa Ridgway, who fostered Steve.
has been done now. “Everyone has been so helpful, we are very happy to have him back,” she says. Jade says she was told Steve was unusually tired. “The vet suspected he might have been drugged. I’ve also heard of cats being stolen to use as bait in dog fights.” How Steve got to Bothasig only he will know, but luckily he found refuge at the ‘‘school that cares’’, as Human like to say.