Mexborough and Swinton Times February 12, 1937

Need a Nine Lives
Darfield Cat’s Trying Ordeal

This cat, “Moses” by name, was lost for nearly 4 weeks before it’s Darfield owner discovered it in a loft where it had been accidentally fastened.

By accident a Darfield cat suffered solitary confinement with nothing to eat or drink for nearly a month!

It belongs to Mr and Mrs John Wilks, of 126 Doncaster Road, Darfield, and is the special pet of their son Ronnie and his brother Kenneth. It surely has (or had) nine lives, for it had previously been run over by the wheel of a passing motorcar, three parts drowned, trapped up to the neck in a line pit, and accidentally jammed in a door. Still Has survived and is as fit and lively as ever. But it will have to be careful. At the most generous estimate it has only four lives left!

The cat – a pretty tortoiseshell – is called “Moses,” because it is a foundling. Kenneth picked it up two years ago. Coming out of the school on a stormy day, he found it crouching frozen under a hedge. It responded to kind treatment and has never ceased to show its affection for him.

About the latest episode – solitary confinement and starvation? It happened this way.

Next door to where the Wilks family live is a public house occupied by Mr J Debney. At the back is a stable loft where spread tables and forms and other stores are kept. Mr Debveney had been to the loft to put back the tables and forms used during the Christmas rush and, coming down, unwittingly pull the trapdoor down with “Moses” in the top.

For four weeks all but two days the scoured the district in a vain search for “Moses” when actually she was not more than 50 yards from our own doorstep. Through the thick stone walls no one heard the catch cries and nobody sociable off. But as luck would have it Mr Debney’s sister went to the loft and open the trapdoor. Out bounded “Moses,” almost a skeleton, but alive!