Brooklyn Cat, Missing for 5 Years, Has Built a Cult Following Around the World

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, NY — It's been more than five years since former Brooklyn Heights resident Cathy Sheehan's cat BeeBop went missing. Still, she has hope they'll reunite one day. And in the meantime, her hope has inspired a whole international community of animal lovers to join in on the search for BeeBop — and dozens of other pets.

"I'm not some crazy nut," Sheehan told Patch from her current home in Portland, Maine. "I knew everybody in the neighborhood, and in five years, nobody's called to say he showed up deceased somewhere."

BeeBop — a now 7-year-old, half-feral cat with a black body and legs; a white belly, chin and feet; and a distinctive black spot on the right side of his face — went missing in the summer of 2011.

Dozens of community members spent hours trying to help Sheehan find BeeBop when he first disappeared. They swept every mile of Brooklyn Heights and repeatedly posted fliers around the neighborhood, she said.

And more fliers have posted in the years since BeeBop was last seen, she said.

The search for BeeBop soon went viral. A Facebook group Sheehan created in 2011 to get the word out about her cat — called "Where is BeeBop?" — attracted thousands of followers who wanted in on the search, or to watch it as a spectacle from afar. Many of them still comment and like Sheehan's posts on a regular basis.

As of Friday, the page had nearly 5,000 likes.

Sheehan posts on the page every day with an update about BeeBop; a flier about another missing cat or pet; or a heartwarming story about someone else's family animal. She said she gets fan mail from people all over the world.

"It keeps my hope alive," Sheehan said. "Last week, somebody in Yonkers had the decency to contact me and say they found a cat on the ACC site that looked like BeeBop. It turned out to be a female with different paws, but it was very kind."

Sheehan said she still gets the occasional prank phone call or hateful email, telling her to give up on finding her cat. Some people still ask her incredulously, "Do you really think after all these years, you'll still find BeeBop?"

To those people, Sheehan said: "Allow me this indulgence to post in my Facebook group every day, because that's how I deal with the grief."

The cruel words of the naysayers are also drowned out by the hundreds of helpers who have dedicated their time to Sheehan along the way, she said.

One woman bought Sheehan 500 stamps to send out mail fliers to her neighbors, she said. Another person sent her an iPad.

"I've never felt a loss like that. To not know what happened is probably the worst feeling in the world. But people still care. The world isn't rotten."

The official timeline of BeeBop's disappearance goes like this: BeeBop first went missing in July 2011. Movers in Sheehan's apartment startled him, and he jumped out through the screen window, Sheehan said. Sheehan was moving from Brooklyn to Portland, Maine.

For the next two days, she looked everywhere for BeeBop, asking everyone in the neighborhood to keep an eye out for his black markings and white paws, and posting fliers on every block. No luck.

A few nights later, when Sheehan was in Maine moving, a neighbor called her to say BeeBop turned up in front of her old Brooklyn apartment.

The next morning, on Friday, July 1, the caretaker of the nearby Heights Players community theater called Sheehan to tell her he had found BeeBop in the theater's basement. He locked the cat in there for the long weekend so Sheehan could retrieve him.

Sheehan traveled from her new house in Maine back to Brooklyn on Tuesday, July 5 to get BeeBop back. When she went into the theater basement, he was nowhere to be found, she said.

Today, Sheehan lives with her two rescue cats, LuLa and MerciMee, who both resemble BeeBop, she said.

Sheehan believes BeeBop is living in someone's home, probably a hoarder who lived nearby in Brooklyn Heights, she said. There are a few people who lived in the community who were infamous for cat hoarding, she said.

Sheehan's father passed away in Maine a year after BeeBop went missing. According to Sheehan, his last words to her were, "Your cat's in somebody's house."

She's still hoping someone will return BeeBop for the $2,000 reward.

"I have no hate in my heart for whoever is caring for him. I really appreciate whoever is caring for him, and if somebody doesn’t want to come forward, they can always come forward through a third party, or anonymously," she said. Contact information for any tips about BeeBop's location is listed on the Facebook page.

"If someone has info that he did pass, please let me know. But I will continue that pet page until I find him."

Photo credit: Cathy Sheehan