‘Help! Up here!’ Missing York cat rescued from empty house after he was spotted at the window

This is Tom and he lives with his family in a house near the Knavesmire in York.

But Tom, a 14-yeaqr-old rescue cat, often rather aloof and very independent minded, is not at home in this picture taken at the window.

He’s trapped in an empty property a few doors down and he has been there for a couple of days!

He was only rescue after Carolyn Faulkner happened to be down this road looking for a lamp post to put up a poster announcing he was missing.

Carolyn told YorkMix the story:

“Well, the last time we saw him was last Thursday night. A neighbour next to the empty house thought he probably got in on the Friday.

That was bonfire night and there were some kids who got into the house. And so she’d gone in to get them out.

She thinks as the door was open he got in but obviously the kids then left, she closed the door behind and Tom was stuck”

“I put it on the Missing Cats in York Facebook page and I was going out to stick up posters yesterday. The road that the house was on, I would not normally have gone up. But this particular day, I thought, Oh, well, I’ll just go up to the end of the road, see this lamp post or something I can put a poster on.

And as I walked up the road, I don’t know what made me look up, but I did, and I just saw his face in the window on the first floor.

“I couldn’t believe it and I could see he was shouting at me.

The next door neighbour, bless her, looked through the window and saw me and came out to help me get in”

“I went up to the room where I’d seen him and he wasn’t there but I could hear him meowing so I went right to the attic room and he was under the bed

“He’s the sort of cat that normally does everything on his own terms, he’s not a lap cat by any means but certainly last night he spent the whole time just with us you know rubbing up against our legs, he was obviously a bit traumatised.”