Clyde's Cat, Stolen From Cider Mill, Found Safe With Help Of Police

MYSTIC, CT — Visiting the historic—the only steam powered cider mill in the U.S.—B. F. Clyde's Cider Mill may be like "stepping back in time," but it is very up-to-date with ensuring the security of the wildly popular mill via surveillance cameras, and ones that include audio.

So when Clyde's family cat Geraldine was stolen from the property Monday, the culprit was on camera. The owners of the Mill, whose Facebook has tens of thousands of followers, created a post to not only alert the person who took the cat, but to ask the public for its support.

"We now know who took Geraldine. We have several indoor and outdoor cameras, including audio, where we hear you say, 'I have the cat,' with video of you and your car. Please bring her back, and all will be forgiven - we really just want her back."

The Stonington Police Department became involved and by late Monday night, Geraldine had been located. (This post will be updated should police respond to a Patch request for comment.)

The police department commented on the Clyde's post: "Cat has been reunited with family!"

Here's Geraldine's incredible story, with a happy ending:

"Geraldine is home and reunited with her siblings and mother!

Thank you all so much for your incredible support and sharing our post to get her back to us. She was returned late last night!

We wanted to give a little more information on Geraldine and her siblings for those who had asked about them. Maggie, their mother, is fully feral and has been living on property and hiding underneath our Grist Mill for about 5 months now. When we finally managed to catch more than a glimpse of her and attempt to catch her, we discovered that she had 3 kittens living with her in our crawlspace.

Over the last 4 months, our 6 year old grandson has been working extremely hard to gain their trust. He has fed them day and night, and spent hours sitting quietly to befriend them.

Geraldine is the only kitten that consistently allows people near her. Her siblings, Thing 1 and Thing 2, are nowhere near as trusting just yet, so someone taking her when she was finally trusting us (and about to go in for her spay + microchip) was very upsetting. She was taken from the area beside our Slushie Hut, which is also next to a member of our family’s yard, where they spend their days.

We have ordered dozens more collars, and are going to be continuing to work with these guys to try and convince them to keep them on!
Maggie and the other babies are thrilled to have Geraldine back, and they’re all currently hanging out in their heated catio together We are hoping this does not set back our progress in teaching them that staying indoors isn’t so scary!

Thank you all so much again for your assistance in finding our sweet girl. We’re going back to our regularly scheduled cider and donut posts now!"