The cat in the two submitted photos posted here thought it had it made. It had a home and family with children to love it, a collar with a tiny bell on it, and of course, food, water and shelter.
In the spring, a pair of little girls came over and told a couple on Prune Street in the city that their cat was stuck in the couple's tree. The brindle-colored tiger shorthair cat was retrieved and that was that.
But weeks ago everything changed. Suddenly, the cat became "unaffordable" and it was no longer welcome in the place it once called home. The collar disappeared.
And Jim and Peggy Benedict, that couple on Prune Street, found the cat spending more and more time in their yard, up their tree, on their back porch.
"We didn't want it to starve to death, so we put food out for it," Peggy says, adding that the cat appears to have gotten skinnier since spring.
Jim approached a neighboring family about the animal, but the head of the household denied ownership.
The couple has two stray cats already and adopted a Plott hound, the state dog of North Carolina, last fall. They can't keep this foundling and are hoping a reader of The Batavian will step up and take this cat to a forever home. There's zero room at the Genesee County Animal Shelter; Peggy knows -- she calls every day.
Peggy says she's not sure if the feline is a female or a neutered male. She says she will pay for a voucher to get a low-cost spay, if it turns out to be an unspayed female.
Peggy guesses the cat is a year or 2 old at most. For now, it lives outside in the Benedicts' yard.
Very friendly, is how she describes the cat. Likes cats, dogs, children, adults. Easy going, sweet disposition; affectionate; likes to be rubbed and petted.
If you would like to meet this unnamed mystery cat, or can help with a home, please call Peggy at 813-5949.
UPDATE 7:20 p.m.: Larry Delre, of Delre's Greenhouse & Garden Center at 4062 W. Main Street Road, Batavia, saw the post and went to visit the cat this afternoon at the Benedicts' house. He was smitten with the feline and will come to fetch it tomorrow. Jim and Peggy Benedict, the temporary caretakers who live on Prune Street in Batavia, are thrilled that everything has worked out for the good of this poor abandoned creature. Yippee!
