Tiger wouldn’t allow Carol O’Connell close him when he first started showing up in her yard approximately three years ago. The elderly cat appeared to be kind, yet he was terrified.
“He’d arrive and then go for months at a time,” said Lynne Meloccaro, executive director of the Dutchess County SPCA in New York. “She fed him for a long period but couldn’t get close to him.”
Because O’Connell works at the DCSPCA and has seen a lot of frightened animals, she knew that if she was patient and nice, Tiger will ultimately warm up to her. O’Connell and her son Dan have worked hard over the past three years to earn Tiger’s confidence, and the cat has now felt secure enough to approach them and even exhibit affection.
Tiger seems to have had a home at one point, based on his demeanor. O’Connell brought a scanner home from work on a whim to test whether he was chipped — and he was, amazingly.
O’Connell informed the shelter he was overjoyed, and they called John and Maggie Welz, the family identified on Tiger’s chip. The Welzes had been gone for 11 years, and the shelter employees couldn’t believe what they were hearing when they met with them.
Tiger had been terrified by something on Halloween night when he was just three years old, and had somehow fled his house and vanished. His family looked everywhere and put up flyers in the hopes that someone would locate him.
They requested the new owners to keep a look out for him when they sold their house, and they continued their hunt from their new home, but they finally had to realize that Tiger would not be returning home.
