Cat Rescued From Doylestown Well

A cat that was discovered at the bottom of an old well that recently opened up on Church Street was rescued Thursday morning and appears to be unhurt.

But staff at the Bucks County SPCA say the cat, whom they have nicknamed "Lucky" will not be made available for a typical adoption.

The grey and white tabby is feral and is "not a good candidate" to become a household pet, Kathy Myron told Doylestown Patch. The SPCA is looking for the right kind of new home for the cat, she said.

"This cat, Lucky, survived the well and we’re going to see that the cat finds a place where it can be cared for," said Myron, who has been a humane officer with the SPCA for 18 years. "We will find someone who cares for feral cats. We’re looking for a place where the cat can stay outside and be as safe and happy as it can be.

"But we have many other cats for adoption that do need homes and would make good pets," Myron said, "so please come, anyone who has room in your home and heart."

Lucky has had a busy few days.

It ended up at the bottom of . Though people immediately assumed the cat had fallen in, Myron said it's not clear exactly how it ended up in the hole, which is believed to be an old well or cistern.

The cat was discovered in the well on Wednesday, Helen Aldredge said.

"An engineer came out (Wednesday) with someone else from the borough," she said. "The engineer looked down and said 'How long has the cat been in there?' We said, 'What cat?' "

Efforts to lure the cat into a humane trap - baited with crab meat leftover from the Aldredges' anniversary dinner - failed. The cat wasn't moving much, if at all, and some observers thought the cat was dead.

Myron, who lives in Doylestown near the Aldredges, said she watched the cat Wednesday night and decided to give it another try.

"Looking down that deep hole, I couldn't be sure," whether it was dead or alive, Myron said. "I thought no matter what condition it was in, we should get it out of there before the hole was closed over."

So Myron called her colleague Craig Claycomb, an animal control officer in Warminster. Claycomb drove to Doylestown Thursday morning with an extension ladder and climbed down into the hole to bring the cat up.

Once they reached the surface around 8:15 a.m., it was clear the cat was not dead.

"It came out of the hole shaking - it was probably scared," Myron said.

Once she got the cat back to the SPCA, though, the cat that had moved so little at the bottom of the hole started moving a lot.

"It is not a happy camper right now," Myron said Thursday morning. "It seems to be healthy and uninjured. It certainly is lively."

The SPCA staff was giving the cat space to settle down after its harrowing ordeal, Myron said, and hadn't examined it closely enough to be sure, but they think it is a male.

The grey and white tabby cat is missing a small part of one ear, which Myron said indicates that it may have been trapped, neutered and released by a group that neuters feral cats to try to reduce the stray population.

Meanwhile, those who think they know the cat from seeing it around town said Thursday they hope it is well cared for.

Josh Henderson, Sean Curran and Zane Bauer said on Twitter that the cat frequently visited their office on East State Street, near the Moose lodge.

The cat that they called Senor would sleep on Henderson's car during the day, and they often fed it and let it into their office. Henderson tweeted a photo of a grey and white cat curled up on a couch, and Bauer shared one of the cat stretching on the ground.

"He is our friend and we care about him," Henderson said. "Please take care of him. He loves turkey."

After seeing those photos, Myron told Doylestown Patch she thinks "Senor" and "Lucky" are one and the same.

By the time she left the SPCA later Thursday, Myron said the cat had settled down and was adjusting to his new, if temporary, home.

(UPDATE: Friday morning, "Senor" was spotted hanging around Doylestown, so these are, in fact, two cats. Efforts are still continuing to find "Lucky" a suitable home.)

As for the hole, it is covered with a sheet of plywood and a metal plate was expected to be placed over it, as well, Myron said. The area of the sidewalk along Church Street where the hole opened up has been barricaded since last weekend.

Helen Aldredge said Thursday that she and her husband are waiting for more detail from borough officials on how best to fill the hole permanently.

"This is as much the borough as it is us," Aldredge said. "We will probably end up paying for it, but we want to do what is the right thing to do. If this is an underground stream and you put stone down, it might all wash away. These are things only a geologist and a structural engineer can decide. I’m a nurse. I can’t make that kind of decision. We have to hear from the borough on what we should do."

But Borough Council president Det Ansinn said the hole is on private property and it is up to the property owners to fix it.

"This is a private property. If it was on public property, the borough would take immediate action," Ansinn said. "It’s a dangerous hole."

The sidewalk along Church Street passes over part of the hole, but sidewalks also must be maintained by private property owners, he said.

"If something happens to your sidewalk - say, if a tree root grows through it and breaks it up - you have to fix it," Ansinn said. "If you don’t shovel your sidewalk in the winter, you can be fined. You as the property owner are responsible for maintaining the sidewalk."

The Aldredges' home still will be available as part of this weekend's Bucks Beautiful Kitchen & Garden Tour, said program administrator Debbie Hays.

The hole opened up the weekend of June 2 and 3, when the grass and dirt that had covered it fell away into the void that had been hidden belowground.

No one had any idea that the cistern was lurking underfoot.

"We've been here 15 years and we never knew it was there," Helen Aldredge said. "The neighbors up the street said they found one just like it, and just filled it in and built over it."

Partially lined with stones, the hole extends a visible 18 feet and possibly deeper than that, borough officials said. They believe it is an old, abandoned well that could date to before the 1850s, when Doylestown first began installing a public water system.

For whatever reason, the well apparently never was filled in. Whatever material covered the top of it simply rotted away over the years.

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