Brooklyn Heights residents and cat ladies of the Internet want to know: Where is BeeBop?
The skittish tuxedo cat ran away from his home on Columbia Place in June, but owner Cathy Sheehan and her 1,300 Facebook supporters aren’t giving up — turning the search into the latest feline whodunit since that cat who was missing at JFK for two months.
“My heart is broken beyond repair,” said Sheehan, a legal secretary who moved to Maine over the summer to care for a sick relative. “But I can’t just give up. This is a cat neighborhood and somebody took him in.”
BeeBop, a feisty feral tom who loves bacon, went missing on June 28 after a mover left the door open. A few days later, he was found at the Heights Players community theater on Willow Place. A member of the troupe kept the cat there for several days, but before Sheehan could retrieve her beloved, someone else freed the cat so that he wouldn’t urinate on the costumes.
Ever since, Sheehan has tirelessly posted “Missing” ads on Craigslist for her neutered pet, who is black with a white belly and a white chin with a black nose and black spot on the right side of his face.
She has also consulted with pet psychics and enlisted locals to circulate fliers — many of which were mysteriously torn down.
Sheehan and her search team believes that BeeBop is the next Jack the Cat, the mouser that became an international celebrity after disappearing at the airport, setting off a two-month search that involved airline staff, thousands of Facebook fans, psychics and a pet detective.
The cat was successfully retrieved.
In Sheehan’s case, the prognosticators are optimistic about the 2-year-old tabby, saying he is still in the area.
“I don’t want to have a thousand crazy cat ladies walking around Brooklyn Heights screaming for him, but people want to keep the momentum going,” Sheehan said.
The psychic told Sheehan that BeeBop was likely being cared for by a local family, and has divulged several possible addresses. In each case, Sheehan’s cat-loving friends have showed up unannounced at the addresses, causing some neighbors to misinterpret all the concern about BeeBop as some kind of weird cat-thieving ring.
“It’s amazing to have so much effort in the neighborhood for one cat,” said Heights resident Mary Reventlow. “He’s around — we just have to persevere.”
Dorothy Sherman, a member of the Brooklyn Bridge Animal Welfare Coalition, said that male cats tend to wander in a 10-block radius.
She plans to visit a local construction site where several people have sighted a black cat, bringing her secret weapons for trapping: sardines and fried chicken.
“I’ve seen several instances where the people do recover animals four months later,” Sherman said. “The problem is that Cathy has to depend on the kindness of strangers to help her.”
Anyone with information on BeeBop should contact Sheehan at (917) 837-6899 or visit www.facebook.com/whereisbeebop. There’s a $325 reward for his safe return — no questions asked.
Reach Kate Briquelet at [email protected] or by calling her at (718) 260-2511.
