Two months ago, a resident in the Springfield neighborhood recorded a man snatching a cat off his neighbor’s front porch, wrestling her to the ground and stuffing it into a tarp before walking away.
Just recently, 5-year-old Ashi was reunited with her owner. The cat was feared dead as at least 20 others had been reported missing — and two were found dead in a nearby dumpster.
Heather Golden, the cat’s owner, says Ashi suffered a broken leg and now has a limp because her leg did not heal properly.
How she was found is quite remarkable.
Golden said she was walking down a sidewalk near Market and 9th streets when she heard a cat meowing for help. Ashi, she said, was calling out to her.
“I turned around and she was standing right there,” Golden said. “I thought I lost my mind for a second, and she meowed again, and I was like, ‘oh she’s real.’
Heather said she followed Ashi to an opening under a home where the cat had been hiding.
She lost a few pounds, but her blood work from the vet came back good — no parasites and no illnesses. How she survived on her own with a broken leg remains a mystery.
“Somebody must have been looking out for her in some way,” Golden said.
This all started back in mid-November when a camera recorded a man snatching Ashi off her front porch and stuffing the cat into a tarp. A man matching the same description was later seen on surveillance footage walking past a neighbors house while holding a tarp.
As police officers scoured the neighborhood looking for a suspect who fit a sketch that was shared among neighbors, residents who were already on edge reported seeing a man fitting the same description while trying to lure neighborhood cats.
One of the residents caught a man in the act before calling the police.
“I made my presence known and approached him with the baseball bat,” resident Chris Waterman previously told News4JAX.
Tips to the police later led to the arrest of Blake Miles, 35. He was charged with two counts of animal cruelty and one count of theft.
The second count of animal cruelty is related to a different case, where JSO previously confirmed to News4JAX that Miles is charged in one cat’s death in Springfield. That arrest report shows it involves allegations made during an incident involving a cat at a rooming house on Market Street also in November.
Miles remains in jail on an $85,000 bond. He’s pleaded not guilty to charges.