Scots town dubbed 'purr-muda triangle' after host of cats mysteriously disappear

A town has been dubbed the “purr-muda triangle” after a host of cats mysteriously disappeared – and turned up 10 miles away.

Moggies have been going missing from East Kilbride and turning up on the outskirts of Motherwell. How and why the pets have ended up in Newarthill, Carfin and Holytown is not known – sparking fears over cat-napping.

So far nine cats have gone missing, leading to some tearful reunions and many unanswered questions. Now a support group has been set up to help others. Pepe’s Friends is a Facebook page named after one of the felines, who is now safely back home. The 12-year-old, who’s blind in one eye, was found in Newarthill 16 days after he vanished last month.

Owner Tracy Mcculloch, 50, said: “It’s 100 per cent not the cats taking themselves there. There’s something going on – we keep finding new cases. When Pepe went missing. It was so out of character. It was a Facebook message from a woman in Newarthill that got us Pepe back.

“She’d seen him around so we went to the area and, when my daughter shook a box of biscuits, he came out and recognised us. He was a bag of bones. But we started hearing of other cats from East Kilbride who’d ended up in the same area. I think someone’s lifting them. One of the owners has been to the police but they said there is nothing they can do.”

Mum-of-two Louise Thomson, 36, was reunited with family favourite Sox two weeks after he disappeared in February.

She said: “I’d lost all hope of ever seeing him again – but then I got a Facebook message from someone in Carfin who’d caught him raiding her bins.”

Linda Cuthbert, of cat rescue charity Clan Mccat Scotland, said: “Cats like familiarity and have a territory they’re regimented in patrolling. They don’t just go for a 10-mile daunder.”

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