MEERUT: Time spent with cats is never wasted, Sigmund Freud is once believed to have said. Mohammad Alam in UP’s Bulandshahr will vouch for that. Two months after he sent a ‘Bengal cat‘ – a beautiful, expensive breed that resembles a Bengal tiger in miniature – from Delhi to Hyderabad and it mysteriously went missing, the transport company ferrying the feline has agreed to pay Rs 1.56 lakh to the distraught owner.
Alam, who runs a restaurant in Bulandshahr, said he had brought up the cat with “much love and care” after it was given to him by a friend in March 2021, when it was just two months old. But circumstances compelled him to sell Rose, his pet, to one Tabrez Khan in Hyderabad. He then hired a Gujarat-based transport company, which has a branch in Delhi, to deliver the cat to its new owner.
On March 3 this year, I handed over the cat in a basket to two employees of the transport company at Delhi’s Nizamuddin railway station from where they were supposed to catch a train and take Rose to Hyderabad. Later, I was informed that the cat had escaped. Despite repeated calls, the firm’s owner, Md Anas, didn’t respond. This forced me to approach the chief of Bulandshahr police Shlok Kumar with a request to trace the cat, following which the senior officer ordered a probe,” said Alam.
“A show cause notice was issued to the company’s owner,” said an officer. When TOI contacted Anas, who agreed to shell out the compensation for the cat, he said, “I have requested the police to give me some time to arrange the money. However, there is a possibility that Alam didn’t lock the basket properly and the cat sneaked out.”