Missing: Presumed Dead

Hello, Everyone...

Ziggy isn't coming back.

Ramiro and I have been searching the neighbourhood every day. We make a very wide spread--miles!--but haven't seen any trace of her. We've been putting up posters everywhere. We've even gone to the local shelters, the vet, and FixNation.

I've blacked it out for the Internet, but in real life those posters have our phone number. We got some calls today...
As it turns out, Ziggy isn't the only cat in our immediate area that's gone missing within the past month. Not by a long shot.

Old Man Wheeler has lost all four (4) of his cats (two in early March, Buckwheat went missing at the end of March, and Blacky went missing last week). The old "Cat Lady" of the neighbourhood has lost eight (8) cats since March (she's down to one cat now--a 15 year old that she keeps inside). Old Cat Lady says she's lived in on this block for 35 years and has always had at least two cats. She also told us that the people who live diagonally from them lost one of their three cats last week as well.Rebel and Robert's Mom went missing last month as well. We didn't think much of it at the time because they're feral... Feral cats like to roam. And since Rebel had yet to be fixed (he/she went missing right before we rented the trap from FixNation), it was fairly likely that he/she had wandered off to mate. Cats can sometimes travel for miles when they're in heat. Not so for neutered/spade cats like Ziggy and the other pet cats who disappeared. The Old Cat Lady said that one of her ferals (she likes to feed the local feral cats on her back porch) has gone missing too.

So, that's 17 (seventeen) cats missing in our neighbourhood (14 pet cats; 3 feral cats).

All of the cats that have gone missing have not come back.

My last/most recent pic of Ziggy. Being a bed cat on 3/31/11

The neighbourhood "theory" is that someone is trapping the local cats and either killing them or dumping them far, far away. They might be trying to get rid of the feral cat overpopulation and getting pet cats by mistake, but, either way, they're sick effers and they should rot in Hell. (Old Cat Lady thinks they might even be using poisoned bait to get our cats--apparently she found a nibbled chicken leg in her yard after her latest cat went missing--but that could just be paranoia; we're not sure).

We're going to be contacting all the proper "authorities" tomorrow during business hours. Not the People Police (with no bodies/hard evidence, it would be silly to get LAPD involved when they have so many other hardcore problems). We'll be contacting all the animal authorities. As well as the shelters, the vet, and FixNation.

As for our remaining cats...Robert (our black male--he just turned 2 on April Fool's Day) and Ringo (Sarahe's old man cat) are now INDOOR ONLY cats. They were mostly indoors before, but we'd let them out to do their "business." Not so as of today. We went out and bought them a litter box. They're not going outside anymore. Ever, probably. Not so long as we're living in this crap neighbourhood with some maniac out and about catnapping everyone's pets! (Isn't it bad enough that we have murderers, rapists, and drug dealers on this block without having a catnapper too?!)

Ramiro and I are absolutely heartbroken (as are the other people who have lost their kitties). We're trying hard to be tough and love on the cats we have left, but it's hard. We don't want to be those people that spend all their time focusing on the dead to the extent that they forget the living (I've seen it happen...). Poor little Robert is taking it hard that his chair buddy isn't around anymore. We both really, really miss Ziggy; but we don't want poor little Robert to go ignored. He's a little sweetheart. We love him too.

It feels weird/wrong that I have work to do. I have a Press Release due tonight and two articles due tomorrow.

I guess I should get going on that. If Ziggy were here, she would have yelled at me if she knew I was procrastinating.

We miss our Baby Girl so much.

--Lauren*
http://littlezotz.webs.com