When Baby Belle the cat went missing, her owners Jean and Kim Atherton-Dow were frantic.
Losing a pet is bad at the best of times – but Baby Belle is blind and Jean was worried she wouldn’t survive.
The black and white cat went missing in the morning of July 5 from the village of Achachork, north of Portree.
Desperate to find her, Jean posted to local Facebook Group ‘Skye Free Ads‘ that evening to ask the community to alert her if anyone saw Baby Belle.
“Baby Belle was an abandoned kitten who was dumped in the streets,” she explained.
“She has been blind from only a few weeks old.”
“She contracted cat flu, and by the time Tala Monastery Rescue found her it was too late to save her sight.”
In her Facebook post to Skye Free Ads, Jean says: “She gets spooked easily because she can’t see, so [she] could have got disorientated.
The Skye community is ‘unbelievable’
The search for the blind cat took place immediately, with many locals doing their part to help bring Belle home.
They shared social media posts, texted and phoned each other across the miles and even went out physically searching.
“From the minute we put out a post saying she was missing we have had people sharing the post and asking after her,” says Jean.
“Our next door neighbour said ‘Karen has already texted us to say she was missing’ – Karen lives about 60 miles away.”
The local vet had also notified their patients of Belle’s disappearance, and provided the couple with a cat trap.
Jean is a medical herbalist, and one of her own patients drove all the way from the south of the island to help.
“They spent five hours in pouring rain, climbing the ridge behind us and searched in the woods for us.”
Thank you to wonderful neighbours
Jean says she and Kim are “still reeling” from when Baby Belle was found.
The couple were sitting in the evening after having just spent two hours searching when a neighbour turned up at the door.
The neighbour said she thought that she had spotted the cat in the opposite field.
When Jean ran out to the field, she found another two neighbours “thigh high in bracken” in the field. They were attempting to contain her in an area.
The neighbour’s cat was sitting on top of a post at the edge of the field.
“She said her cat had been sitting there mewing really loudly, and that another cat was responding back to her so they went to check.”
“I got down on the ground near her and called her, and she just came straight to me and lay down. She was absolutely exhausted.”
When Baby Belle finally made it home, Jean and Kim were “both in tears”.
The couple would like to thank the entire community of Skye – “the length and breadth of it”.
Jean and Kim moved up together from Lothian to Skye in a bid to protect their cats after three died where they lived previously.
“We moved here because we were so hurt by the loss in the Lothians, and wanted to find community.”
“Skye has welcomed us for the past two and a half years, and this week has shown us how much heart and community there is.”
