‘Your cat’s gone, take this one instead’: Traumatised woman reveals Gumtree petsitting nightmare after her beloved feline ‘Jet’ DISAPPEARED
- Woman warns pet owners to vet Gumtree petsitters after cat lost by foster carer
- Rosie Rezaie’s cat, Jet, went missing after she gave him to a petsitter to look after
- The woman lost cat and then told Ms Rezaie it had been stolen by another man
- In good news, Ms Rezaie’s cat was spotted by a family and returned to her safe
A woman has warned fellow pet owners about the dangers of advertising on Gumtree after a nightmare experience in which her cat was lost by its foster carer.
Brisbane woman Rosie Rezaie, 24, advertised on the popular website looking for a temporary foster carer for her one-year-old cat Jet.
But the temporary arrangement turned into a nightmare when Jet disappeared after the foster carer gave her cat away, and then tried to give her another cat instead.
The experience has led to Ms Rezaie encouraging other Gumtree users to carefully check out the credentials of anyone offering petsitting or foster care online.
Brisbane woman, Rosie Rezaie (pictured) is warning other pet owners to carefully vet any anybody offering petsitting or foster caring services on Gumtree, after her cat Jet (pictured) was lost by a foster carer she found on the popular site
The ordeal for Ms Rezaie began after a woman responded to her ad saying she was wanting to adopt a cat.
‘She then asked what ‘fostering’ meant, and I explained it to her,’ Ms Rezaie told the Courier Mail.
‘I should have known then that something was off. I told her, “It means I only give it to you for a short time, but I will look after all expenses until I get it back”.’
After the woman told her she now understood what fostering involved, Ms Rezaie went to her house around noon on Saturday to meet her.
When she arrived the woman already had another cat with her.
A worried Ms Rezaie asked if that cat got along with other cats, and the woman assured her it did, to trust her, and that everything would be fine.
Ms Rezaie felt that something was wrong with the situation but went ahead and left Jet with the foster carer before driving home.
That night she was messaged by the woman to say the cats weren’t getting along, so Ms Rezaie said she’d come and get her cat the next day.
But later that night the woman messaged again Ms Rezaie saying she’d given her cat to another man.
Ms Rezaie was able to get the man’s name and address, but was warned off approaching him by the woman.
Rosie Rezaie’s Jet (pictured) was lost by a foster carer found on Gumtree. When Ms Rosie asked where Jet was, the foster carer said she had given him to another man, who would not give him back
‘She warned me, said that if I went to get the cat back the man was crazy and would do something to my cat, because he loved it so much,’ she said.
The next day Ms Rezaie visited the man at his Brisbane address, who told her he’d never had the cat and that the woman was lying and had lost the cat.
An angry and upset Ms Rezaie returned to the petsitter’s house and confronted her about her lost cat.
‘All the neighbours had come to see what was going on. [The woman] was there, and she had another cat. She threw it at me and said “Your cat’s gone, take this one instead”,’ Ms Rezaie said.
The shocked neighbours called the police and took the new cat with them.
After a fitful few days in which she drove around searching for Jet and put up posters offering a reward for her return, she received a phone call saying her one-year-old cat had been found.
Jet had shown up in a family’s backyard and had been spotted by the kids who lived there.
They had Ms Rezaie’s contacts from a community Facebook page and messaged her to let her know the good news.
Ms Rezaie said she will keep Jet close to home now.