Cat Dumped in Wal-Mart Parking Lot Gets Adopted

Woodbridge, NJ - January 15. A frigid time of year in central New Jersey.

That's when two women decided to leave their aging male cat in a shopping cart in the parking lot of the Woodbridge Wal-Mart. And those women still have not been found.

"It was all caught on security video," said Heather Campione, manager of the Woodbridge Animal Shelter. "The two girls parked and went into the store that Friday. They shopped and came back outside with their packages. They put the packages in their car, took the cat carrier out and left the carrier in the same shopping cart they had just used."

"And then they just drove away."

It's unknown how long Walter, as rescue workers nicknamed him, sat in his carrier in the freezing cold lot, as cars zoomed by. Another shopper noticed him, and called Woodbridge Animal Control.

At the Woodbridge Animal Shelter, Walter remained "really, really scared," for the next few months, Campione said. "He would just hang in the back of his cage, wild-eyed."

Wherever "home" had been, it was not a nice place. Walter was covered in fleas and his teeth were rotted, she said. But animal volunteers at the shelter nursed him back to health and by March, "Walter had revealed himself as just a really sweet, really laid-back cat," she said.

In fact, you might have seen him in residence at the Woodbridge PetSmart, where he garnered five applications to adopt him. That's almost unheard of for a cat estimated to be 8-10 years old, she said.

"His personality just shone through," she said. "You could see how sweet he was."

In fact, on Saturday, Walter was adopted and he went to his new home.

And as for those two women, pictured above? They got away with it.

"I'm sure they were local," Campione said. "Who knows why they did it? The thing is, they could have just dropped Walter off at the Woodbridge shelter. We charge a $50 fee to take the cat, and we waive it if someone really can't pay."

In the end, however, "Walter got a much better home, anyway."