Quilty the cat is a pain in the ass

[Major Nikon]

HOUSTON - A cat’s escape tricks at a Houston animal shelter may have landed him a home.

For Quilty, a 6-year-old cat at the Friends For Life Animal Rescue and Adoption Shelter, escaping confinement was easy, but how not to get caught by shelter workers would take some skills.

“He has gotten out quite a few times," said shelter employee Beth Brown. “The last straw on the camel’s back was the day he let them out three times in a row, in the middle of the afternoon, with us watching him.”

Brown said the first escape happened while the shelter was closed for the night. Employees returned to the shelter one morning to find 12 cats running amok.

“One cat had peed on the mouse pad," Brown said. "One cat had pooped in the donation bin. Things were on the floor.”

https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/meet-quilty-the-houston-shelter-cat-that-won-t-be-contained

[Harker]

1. That's pooping with purpose. n/t

[Karadeniz]

2. This happened to one of my fosters! Hef (from Hefner, a lover, not Hefty Bag) was HUGE,

Maybe the biggest cat I've ever fostered. We quickly realized he would open the lever door handles during the night...he probably didn't even have to stretch! We stopped that with a chair braced against the door. All was fine.I

When he went up for adoption, I didn't even remember his breaking and entering ways, but he wouldn't have been able to unlatch a cage. So, fine.

Unfortunately, the humane society had just converted their gift shop into a large community cat room. Since Hef was so obviously a highly social cat and used to living with an army of fosters, the humane decided to put Hef there. Hmmm... It was so new, locks hadn't been installed. The doors had lever handles. Hmmm...

In the middle of the night, the burglar alarms went off. An employee was summoned to let the police in. Local t.v.stations were called and showed up, cameras at the ready. A policeman in full body armor, dripping guns, broke into an office where a shy cat was spending the night and just about caused her to have a seizure. While police were swarming the building, there was Hef, lying on the reception counter, smiling sweetly while he remained above the chaos.

After all the escapees were caught, the employees determined that the culprit was Hef. I don't know how. He probably looked a bit too selfsatisfied. So, they made a video for the local stations, holding Hef and blaming the fiasco on him.

Hefs notoriety paid off. The next morning, a man literally burst through the front door and, also literally, yelling that he was there to adopt the escape artist! And so Hef found his forever home!

I only heard of the event weeks later when I was told of his adoption. That's when I remembered about Hef and levered handles, verifying that they nabbed the right miscreant!