Kitten stolen from mother — $2,000 reward offered

BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer

A month-old kitten was stolen from the cage it shared with its mother and siblings at a Redwood City shelter, and now the shelter is offering $2,000 for his return.

Sometime on May 14, someone opened up the cage that holds Olaf, his mother Olivia and three siblings, and walked off with the kitten, according to Whis-Purr founder and director Lucy Brock.

Right now the shelter is closed unless someone has an appointment, so Brock suggested that the only way someone could have taken Olaf was if they went into a small hallway at Peninsula Feed Store, which shares the building at 346 El Camino Real with the shelter.

Brock said she keeps the cages covered up on the Feed Store side so people aren’t ogling at the nursing kittens, but thinks that someone must have opened up the cage from that side of the store and taken Olaf.

Kitten’s family apparently shaken

Olaf’s disappearance has shaken his family, with his mother looking for her lost kitten in the pen. Olaf’s sister Olea has been curled in the corner of the cat’s shared pen, upset ever since her brother’s disappearance, Brock said.

Brock is also worried about the barely-month-old kitten, which is not weened from its mother’s milk. She’s concerned that whoever has Olaf may not know how to take care of a kitten that young, who at that age is still very dependent on his mother, even to go to the bathroom.

Brock also pointed out that the kitten would be crying a lot, missing his mother and sister, to whom he is bonded.

Brock reported the missing kitten to the police. No information on the cat-napper is available since the shelter’s cameras were not pointed in that area.

On May 8, while a handyman installed some new cameras, a man came in and was looking around at the camera and Olaf’s pen, which raised Brock’s suspicions. She suggested that maybe this man took Olaf and was looking to take another cat.

Brock is hoping that the $2,000 will be enough to get Olaf back to his family and that the kitten will turn out OK.

Olaf has unique-looking tiger stripes on his brown fur. Brock believes he will be a Maine Coon cat.

Anyone with information about Olaf is asked to call (650) 787-4505.