A feline that roams New Zealand’s capital city and is welcomed into tattoo parlors, hairdressers and office towers has become a social media star, with 30,000 followers who track his every movement online.
Mittens first came to attention in 2018 after repeatedly wandering inner-city dwellings, including the university, post office and a Catholic church.
After repeated encounters with the cat, an Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) employee started a Facebook page, “The Wondrous Adventures of Mittens,” to reassure locals that the cat was not lost and did not need to be “rescued” — he was just adventurous.
The page now has 30,000 followers, with locals tracking Mittens’ daily activities around town.
A selfie with Mittens has become a bucket-list item for many Wellington residents.
Owner Silvio Bruinsma said that Mittens had similar venturesome habits when they lived together in Auckland, but Wellington’s compact inner city has now made him much easier to track.
Mittens’ brother, Latte, also a Turkish angora, does not share the intrepid streak and rarely ventures more than 20m from home, while Mittens can roam up to 2km.
“He has made Wellington his playground,” Bruinsma told the Dominion Post. “I suppose my philosophy is, he doesn’t like being locked up and I don’t want to give him a life that is miserable.”
Although there was some initial concern for Mittens’ apparently aimless wanderings, locals and visitors now actively go looking for the cat.
Sam Thacker, one of the administrators of the Facebook group and a SPCA employee, has known Mittens for years and describes him as “street smart.”
“Please don’t pick him up and bring him into the SPCA,” Thacker wrote on Facebook. “He has come in too many times with well meaning people. All this means is that his owner has to come and collect him off us! We have had him in with us recently and he is perfectly healthy.”
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
RSS