Budley the cat comes back after two years on the prowl

In April 2023 a local pet frightened the already-skittish seven-month-old Budley after gaining entry to his garden. His owner, Deirdre Dudley-Owen, said that from then on he began straying away from home for longer and longer stretches of time, until weeks later he did not return at all.

‘I put up posters, I went looking, I went knocking on houses,’ she said. Budley was not microchipped as he was too restless to pin down for an appointment.

She believed he had been re-homed or killed on the same road that two of her other cats have died on until July of this year, when he unexpectedly appeared in the garden.

‘I was over the moon and we fed him but I didn’t quite know how to capture him to get him inside, and he went off again.’

Then in late August she was contacted by local cat-hunter Janie Rabet from the Facebook group Guernsey’s Lost and Found Pets.

Ms Rabet had spotted him on L’Ancresse Common while looking for another lost feline, though he ‘took off like a rocket’ when approached.

Ms Rabet has been reuniting missing cats with their families for more than 30 years, but she says that Budley was her trickiest operation yet, which she puts down to the unusually large scope of territory he was covering.

For 27 days she followed him, trying to map his unpredictable movements and erratic routine.

‘He’d appear in one garden on one side of Pembroke, then disappear for five days and appear over by L’Ancresse.

'It was really hard to pinpoint where he’d be,’ she said.

Reports that Budley was spending time with a female cat whenever she was on heat began to trickle through.

Although she had observed Budley successfully hunt baby rabbits, Ms Rabet was becoming concerned for the cat's health as he started to look skinny.

She finally tracked his den down to an unused and well-hidden shed, where the owner had no idea the fugitive was staying. With their permission, Ms Rabet laid a cage trap with food inside. On the third night of waiting last Wednesday, she caught him.

‘She has been absolutely incredible. I didn’t really know what to think. I couldn’t believe it, but she sent me photographs of him, and it was him,’ Miss Dudley-Owen said of Ms Rabet’s help and receiving the call that Budley had been caught.

Ms Rabet brought him to Sue Vidamour, the head of Guernsey’s Lost and Found Pets, who took him to the vet to be neutered and checked for fleas and various diseases on Friday. The same day, Miss Dudley-Owen picked him up, and he has mostly stayed in her bedroom since.

She said the cat was loving being back at home alongside her two dogs, although his sister Iris is less pleased with her brother’s return.

‘He is happy as Larry to hang out, do next to nothing in the sun in my bedroom and eat his food — he’s like the cat that got the cream. He’s just in love with being at home and he’s happy to give cuddles,’ she said.

While Miss Dudley-Owen does not agree with cats being kept inside, she is keeping Budley in the house for a few weeks until he relearns it is a safe place. In the meantime, she has thoroughly escape-proofed her house and is currently securing a tracking collar.