Four-year-old's constant companion missing in Timaru

Thursday, 24 June 2021

Timaru four-year-old Pyper Richards plays with her kitten that has since gone missing.

Pyper Richards’ best friend is missing.

Eight-month-old grey domestic shorthaired kitten Roetar – named because her constant loud purring brings to mind a rotary engine – hasn’t been seen at her Luxmoore Street house in two weeks.

“Night times are the worst,” Pyper’s mother Jodie-Anne Richards said.

The two youngsters have been inseparable since Roetar came home as an eight-week-old kitten, sleeping every night with four-year-old Pyper.

Pyper Richards’ constant companion Roetar has been missing for two weeks from Luxmoore Rd, Marchwiel. She and her mother, Jodie-Anne Richards, have searched high and low, distributing hundreds of fliers around the neighbourhood.

“It’s the only way to get her to go to bed,” said Richards.

Pyper has slept in her mother’s bed since the night Roetar didn’t come home.

“I managed to get her to sleep in her own bed last night for the first time since the cat went missing, but she was so disappointed when she woke up this morning without her.”

Four-year-old Pyper Richards leaves a bowl of food out for her missing pet. Roetar is an eight-month-old grey domestic shorthaired kitten, and is lost in the Marchwiel area.

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Four-year-old Pyper plays with her pet kitten and best friend Roetar, who has been missing for the past two weeks.

Pyper leaves a bowl of cat food at the mailbox before school every morning and insists the pair go door-knocking with fliers each afternoon in the hope of bringing Roetar home.

The pair have been “glued together” since picking the kitten up in Temuka, sleeping, eating and playing together, Roetar even accompanying them for rides in the car clasped in Pyper’s arms.

Richards said she has taken fliers to Timaru vets, the SPCA, businesses, a nearby school and kindergarten, and even police as well as delivering some 150 pamphlets door-to-door in Marchwiel.

“I just hope someone has pinched her and is taking care of her, rather than she’s just out there all alone,” she said.

Richards said the community has been “fantastic” and her almost daily posts on social media have been widely shared.

Strangers have been in touch to wish her the best, offer tips or recount their own stories of lost pets.

She has been contacted several times by people who believe they have seen Roetar and has dropped everything to race to a location only to discover someone else's grey cat, or no sign of a feline.

Richards said seeing how desperately Pyper wanted to find the cat is heartbreaking, and she hopes Roetar might be found in time for her daughter’s upcoming fifth birthday.