This story just blows my mind because like nearly every cat owner, I took have had times I thought my cat had gotten out when instead she was just lurking somewhere in the basement and it has never once occurred to me to invent a blood libel against my neighbors to explain a missing cat.

EEtrance.bsky.socialSep 18, 2024 9:59pm

Turns out the cat, Miss Sassy, had been hiding in the basement the whole time www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Vance said a Springfield resident’s cat was stolen and eaten. Instead, it was hiding

Anna Kilgore, a Springfield resident, apologized to her Haitian neighbors over the cat mix-up

* I TOO have had, eff you autocorrect

actual cat stuff in my neighborhood - helped an elderly neighbor get her cat back inside - used a FlipperZero to read a found kitten's chip and get it back to the family that just rescued it - neighbor helped trap an injured stray so it could get taken to the vet and a wound mended real neighbors

My cat did get out. I spent my time worrying, and not making up lies about my neighbors.

Someone should eat Vance… Probably tastes like crazy though.

Even if a cat was legit missing, hit by car/mauled by coyotes/found better deal in someone else's house/hitched a ride in an engine is so much astronomically more likely than what they alleged. It's not a conclusion one automatically jumps to unless one is a racist with malicious intent.

3 months, I lost mine in the basement once. *3* MONTHS!!! And, no, I did not accuse my Satmar neighbors of killing him.

My cat can pancake himself incredibly flat under the blankets on my bed, and I will have no idea where he is until I kick him when I get in bed for the night

The worst I ever thought was once when my first kitty went missing, that maybe coyotes had gotten him. He returned 3 days later and never said where he'd been!

... UNTIL NOW

I’d once had a neighbor shoot my cat. The neighbor was very much not a Haitian. I didn’t learn of my cat’s fate until years later. Luckily for all of us, we no longer lived in the same homes/neighborhood. I’ve held a serious grudge for my entire life. May they be eternally haunted by my cat’s ghost.