CS denizens, I urgently need your help. (Animal/Shelter/Law people esp. Useful)

[Marlowe]

I know it sounds really feeble, and even though if this was someone else saying it I'd be beating my head against a wall, but... I'm still trying to negotiate with them. It's stupid, I know, and it's got to the stage where I've actually offered them a bribe to give them to me, but rest assured I will not let this rest - the second I have my fur babies back, I will unleash holy hell upon them. Not only do I have access to some VERY scary young men (Republican activism ftw) but I'm a computer fiend and can easily tear their world apart. I mean... just imagine if some misinformed person were to pass it on to the local anti-drug vigilantes that they were dealing drugs out of their house...

And then I'll call the police.

One thing I am sure of though and that is whatever happens I am getting my damn cats back. Those cats are like my children and NO ONE is going to take them from me.

[Marlowe]

If you are in the Belfast area/Ireland, and see these cats up for adoption, please PM me asap.


This is Bundy. She is a large neutered female tabby cat and has a reflective collar with eyes on it. Her tail is deformed from an accident she had and is stumpy with a thick knot. She is also bowlegged and likes to eat wallpaper.


The one in the foreground is Jeffrey. (The one in the background is Dexter, but I still have him.) He is an overweight, bad-tempered kitty, but has no collar because he keeps trying to eat it. He has tuxedo markings with white socks and has a kink in his tail.


This is Little Girl. She is small and very quick and agile. Like Bundy and Jeffrey, she's neutered, and she has a purple collar that she occasionally tears off. She also really likes to climb curtains.


This is Mordred. He is small, black/dark reddish brown with a white dickie bow, and very fluffy. His tail is also missing its tip, and because of an infection he had when he was a baby he can't meow - he just squeaks. He also has appalling gas and will fart if you squeeze him. He is fixed, and has a black/dark grey/white spotty collar.

They are all very tame and like to be picked up and cuddled.


And, on a more cheerful note, this is the hopelessly retarded kitty that I managed to keep. He's my baby because I raised him from a few days old... and his name is Mr Francis

[fireheart]

To be honest, I'm surprised they didn't use the # of cats listed against you.
Were any of them microchipped by any chance? (YMMV but I'm fairly sure that most shelters require their animals to be chipped)

[Marlowe]

To be honest, I'm surprised they didn't use the # of cats listed against you.
Were any of them microchipped by any chance? (YMMV but I'm fairly sure that most shelters require their animals to be chipped)

I have a largish house and a decent sized yard that I built a run for them in to extend their space even further (no free roaming outside, my neighbourhood kids are evil shits) so it's not like I have them crammed into a small apartment. There's a small bedroom too that me and my housemate don't use (we'd rather split the extra between us and have the house to ourselves because it just doesn't have the amenities to support more than just us) and I converted it into a cat playroom... plus I change their litter every day. So yeah, it is a fair number of kitties, but they have lots of runaround space, one-on-one playtime, and I clean up after them constantly, and get their food wholesale, so it's not a problem.

They're not chipped no because they never go out, so the vet said it probably wasn't entirely necessary.

[Caffienated_Caramel]

I'd still get them chipped if you can afford it. It can save you a lot of trouble if someone got a hold of them again or if one of them decided to escape. You never know, if one of them wanted to explore outside of where they're allowed to roam, they will find a way.

My own cat Cloey escaped twice to explore while I was living with mom and C at the time.

Hope you get your kitties back They're so pretty

[Eireann]

I still think it's best to call the police. You have almost no bargaining power. The police will scare them. If you try to bribe them to return your kitties, they may keep holding out for larger and larger amounts. Go to the police, have them look at your house and check with your vet to make sure the kitties are in good health, and let them loose on this "shelter". Who knows how many other pet owners have had problems with them, but didn't call the police? If they had, this wouldn't have happened to you - and you could be saving countless others from this pain.

[Zellie Crescent]

Holy shit. Call the police NOW! The more you wait the less chance you have at getting your fur babies back, these assholes can't be negotiated with.

[Pixilated]

If you are determined to continue on with these negotiations (although I heartily agree with those who say call the cops NOW), who's doing the negotiating on your behalf? If it's yourself, I don't mean to be harsh, but what leverage do you have? The people who took the cats have made it clear they don't think you have much, or they wouldn't have taken the cats in the first place. Get one of your law friends do the negotiating instead. Someone with a law degree and an established track record is a little more apt to get these characters to cooperate -- not to mention they will have formal records of the proceedings if they are needed.

[Seraph]

Marlowe, please listen to me, very very closely. Call the police now. Waiting only weakens your case, you will NOT get your cats back from them. CALL THE POLICE NOW, OR YOU WILL LOSE YOUR FURCHILDREN.

Please, if you ever, ever listen to anything I tell you, listen now. Call them. CALL THEM NOW. I am begging you, for the love of those kitties. CALL.

[Marlowe]

I have given up on pleading nicely and called them up today from a disposable cell I borrowed. I basically spent twenty minutes dropping heavy hints about what exactly I had the capabilities to wreak upon them should I choose without actually making a threat (1, super computer whiz with enormous community of hacker friends, 2, access to a variety of truly terrifying young men due to past activism, and 3, lots of high-flyer lawyers) and giving them a deadline to respond before I called the police and/or unleashed my brand of hell. Possibly both should I put something "interesting" on his computer. When I hung up I am 99% sure they were pissing themselves, especially when I informed them that, should they choose to up sticks, I would find them within the week.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.

Hope you get your kitties back They're so pretty

Thanks You should see Little Girl when she is awake, she has huge green almond-shaped eyes with an thick black kohl-like outline around them. She's beautiful.

The tabby, Bundy, actually has her own song I made up off the top of my head for her one day (I sing to my cats sometimes... because I'm a freak. Ahem.) Imagine it to the tune of Aqua's "Barbie Girl."

She's a Bundy girl
In a Bundy wo-or-orld
She's psychopathic
It's fantastic
She always eats my hair
She bites me everywh-er-er-ere
Cat manipulations
And psycho ideation!

Yeah. Uhh... don't judge me. Please.

[Draper Mel]

The tabby, Bundy, actually has her own song I made up off the top of my head for her one day (I sing to my cats sometimes... because I'm a freak. Ahem.)

I make up songs for my cats too! And I've done one, well part of one, to "Barbie Girl":

She's a Kitty Girl
In her Kitty wo-or-ld
Life is fuzzy
Fuzzy wuzzy!

That's as far as I got with that one. I have another one I wrote called "It's not Easy Being Mean" to the tune of "It's not Easy Being Green" from the Muppets. My cat Julie tends to be a little tyrannical in her role as alpha female.

Anyway, I hope you get your cats back. I would have gone to the police a long time ago, but that's me. I think an official sounding email or phone call from one of your lawyer friends just might put the fear of God in them. And there may be some actual laws that would apply in this situation.

Good luck. I hope you can post good news soon.

[Mikkel]

Get a lawyer into it NOW. He can scare them or decide to call the police (or both). They have shown already that they don't respect you.

[Marlowe]

My cat Julie tends to be a little tyrannical in her role as alpha female.

I would like to meet Julie. She sounds a lot like my beloved Bundy.

I would have called the police sooner too except for the niggling voice of what they might do to my cats if I did. Whatever people like this say, they don't give a damn about animals, and the heat was put on them they might just dump them in a river or something However, I have now broken out the serious threats, and impressed upon them that dumping the cats and running will just make things so, so much worse for them. They seem pretty scared. Hopefully, this means they'll start cooperating.

Besides, I have better sources and resources than the police thanks to my past activist connections. And they're not bound by those pesky "law" things...

[Seraph]

Marlowe, tough love time, then. I am sorry, but I'm about to be super blunt.

You asked for advice. The overwhelming reply has been go to the police immediately. You have completely ignored that. You're overly confident that your *cough cough* borderline illegal *cough* will get your cats back. Sorry to be straight, but that's not guaranteed. It's a nice thing to think, but in many cases, it doesn't work. Or, it horrifically backfires. Now that you've insinuated threats to them, don't you think that if something DOES happen, they'll point fingers straight at you?

If you had listened, and followed the advice that you asked for, you would've had your cats back by now. But you haven't. You will most likely not get your cats back now, and I am truly sorry for that. I'm more sorry for them, because YOU COULD'VE GONE TO THE POLICE.

I'm floored by all of this. Really, I am.

[Marlowe]

The overwhelming reply has been go to the police immediately. You have completely ignored that.

Have you any idea how shit the police are here? Not for anything that's their fault, but because they have more important things to do than look for cats. Ie, the fact we have honest-to-God terrorists with submachine guns and bombs running around blowing up town centres. My cats will not be their concern, especially around the Twelfth of July. It's all they can do to stop Loyalist gangs from attacking predominantly Catholic areas/vulnerable Catholics living in mixed areas. People get stabbed. People get shot. Hell, people get blown up, all because of their religion, and the police are the biggest targets. If I called them out for this, they'd probably think it was a lure to get them into my very Catholic, very dangerous area, and they wouldn't come. Chances are, they'd drop in on the people who did it, do a cursory check, and fuck off again, giving them plenty of chances to off my cats and leg it.

Here, we look after ourselves. The local enforcement protect us better than the police ever have, and they're who we go to. The police don't care about me, I'm poor and I'm Catholic and I'm Republican. I'm the bottom of the totem pole. Once, I got grabbed, beaten, and sexually assaulted cutting through a Protestant area on the way home. The police gave no fucks and just insinuated it was my fault for leaving "my" area. My overbuilt, overcrowded ghetto, which is only so overcrowded because it meant they could cram the growing Catholic population into one electoral ward so we didn't get a proper chance at democracy, rather than "contaminate" a Protestant one. Another time, a man was abducted, beaten and shot. The guys never got arrested, despite eyewitness testimony and ballistics evidence, as well as dozens of people saying they'd been bragging around the town that they'd done it. The fact the local police were seen laughing and drinking with them in the pub shortly after, while the guys were still in bloody clothes, speaks volumes as to why.

This isn't America. This is a country that until recently was in a full-on civil war, and that has been teetering on the edge of it ever since, especially recently. And where I live is the epicentre.

So no, I couldn't have "just gone to the police." That's why I came here for advice, because I couldn't get it anywhere else. Not to be chewed out by someone who, for no fault of their own, and I don't blame you for this at all because it's so covered up, doesn't understand what life is like here.

(Also, I use Tor and CryptoCloud. My history is erased at the end of every session, and writes over itself to thoroughly wipe it, not because I'm paranoid, but because i know people who have been arrested and dragged to the Serious Crime Suite (which they can do here, without any charges) on the slightest provocation. My email is unattached to any contact that traces back to who I am. There is no way they could trace me to this site, even if I did choose to make good on threats, which I most likely wouldn't, because, you know, I'm not a sociopath. Just a very upset, very angry girl who has lost the few friends in life she has to some unscrupulous bastards.)