Where’s Pepper?
The stray cat that became an unofficial campus mascot is missing.
She was last seen on March 5, a week after the Crow’s Nest published a feature on the beloved tabby.
Sudsy Tschiderer, the university’s longtime events facilitator is worried. She was part of the small crew that fed Pepper and gave her flea protection and de-worming medication.
“If anyone sees her, please tell us,” Tschiderer said. “She is a much-beloved part of our campus. We have Pepper fans all over the school.”
The cat showed up a couple of years ago, emaciated and wary of people. Over time, she regained her health and warmed up to the folks who cared for her.
She became a fixture in the courtyard of the journalism building and used an entrance fashioned by the building department to go in and out of her quarters underneath the historic Williams House next door.
In the weeks following Pepper’s disappearance, Tschiderer has posted fliers around campus seeking help in finding the shy kitty.
Could someone in the university’s administration be responsible for Pepper’s disappearance? Tschiderer doesn’t think so.
“A lot of rumors tend to float around,” she said. “But the folks who handle situations like this are (in the) Facilities Services (department), and I feel very strongly if there was an issue they would’ve told us.”
As concern about Pepper grew, a Crow’s Nest reporter visited the Pinellas County Animal Services shelter in Largo recently and learned the shelter picks up an average of 30 cats from around the county – a day
Pepper wasn’t there.
Because of the heavy influx, the agency keeps unclaimed cats for only three days. After that, the cats undergo a medical exam.
If they pass the exam and aren’t considered feral, they are relocated and placed for adoption at animal shelters around the region. But if they fail either benchmark, they are euthanized.
A visit to another local animal shelter, Friends of Strays in St. Petersburg, also turned up nothing, and neither did a review of dozens of web pages that list adoptable cats in the Tampa Bay area.
But there may still be hope.
After seeing the fliers, two students told the Crow’s Nest they have seen a cat that looks like Pepper around Residence Hall One and the Student Life Center as recently as last week.
But if it was Pepper, she can’t come home again. Somebody has put a board over the entrance to her shelter beneath the Williams House.
If you see Pepper, contact Sudsy Tschiderer at (727) 873-4842 ASAP or the Crow’s Nest at ann21@mail.usf.edu. Pepper is shy. Her campus friends ask that you not try to catch her.
