“Good news, George is alive.”
Adelaide woman Jessica van Niekerk was teaching her class of bright-eyed Year 2 students when she received an unexpected text message from her mother.
“It took me a while to figure out what she was talking about,” Van Niekerk says, considering her cat had gone missing two and a half years ago.
Then she twigged: “Oh my gosh … they’ve found George.”
The moggy had been calling a narrow drainpipe home before being spotted by a passerby.
“I was shocked, to be honest,” Van Niekerk said.
“I looked for months and I always held out a little hope, but in the end I gave up on ever seeing him again.”
The vanishing act of George the cat
Van Niekerk adopted George and his sister Dusky four years ago, bringing them home to their place in the suburb of Evanston Gardens.
The kittens joined Van Niekerk, her partner and, later, Rex – a German shepherd puppy with whom George got along well.
When the small family moved house to Davoren Park, George took on the responsibility of keeping young Rex in line – but just one week after the move, disaster struck.
“I’d been taking him outside wearing a harness and a leash to help him get used to his new surroundings,” Van Niekerk said. “I’d brought him back inside and taken his leash off but not his harness.”
“Then I had to go out briefly, and while I was out one of our housemates accidentally left the laundry door open,” she said.
“George ran off, still wearing his harness.”
Still hopeful, she posted pleading ads to Facebook, including on Lost Pets of South Australia, but her phone lay silent. Posters on Stobie poles and noticeboards in the neighbourhood were just as futile. Even rescue organisations could not help.
“He was very skittish around strangers so I knew he wouldn’t come up to anyone who called out to him,” Van Niekerk said. As the months passed, the last flicker of hope that George might return went out.
Two and a half years later, reports of a cat with a strap hanging down from its neck and lingering around a workplace in Edinburgh – 10km away from Van Niekerk’s home – made its way to RSCPA South Australia.
“This cat had been living in drainpipes near my work for years and we’d been putting food out for it occasionally,” Courtney, who reported the cat, said.
“We noticed what looked like a piece of rope around its neck and hanging down its front legs, and that’s when I decided to call the RSPCA.”
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“I now know that the rope was the body band of the harness this cat was wearing when he ran off – it must have been hidden under his fur and had finally snapped, because this was the first time we noticed it.”
Now to catch the cat.
Tears at George’s second escape
RSPCA officers provided Courtney with a nifty animal trap which she used to lure mangy George into.
That’s when George staged another Houdini act. A well-meaning staff member thought George had been trapped without food over the weekend and opened the cage to feed him, an RSPCA media release said. The cat made a run for it.
“There were some tears out the back that day,” Courtney said.
The trap was reset and, five days later, George was safe and sound once again. He was taken to RSPCA’s O’Halloran Hill animal care centre, where a scan identified his microchip.
But it wasn’t until Van Niekerk saw her George that she really believed it was him.
“I didn’t know what he was going to look like, I wanted to make sure it was the right cat,” she said. “But it was definitely him.”
George was “a bit unsure at first” when he was reunited with Van Niekerk, approaching her slowly.
“But all it took was for him to have a sniff, and he warmed up straight away, and was rubbing his face all over us.
Van Niekerk marvelled at the fact that her homebody cat had lived on the streets for so many years.
“I just think about the last few years, the weather we’ve had, hail and thunderstorms and it has been so hot outside, how the heck did he manage to survive?”
“It’s my birthday next Tuesday, and having George back has to be about the best present I’ve ever had.”
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