What was claimed
A Facebook user is trying to reunite a recently injured cat with its owner.
Our verdict
False. The photograph of the cat in the post is more than four years old and was taken in California.
Cat injured in Middlesbrough is really a viral 2018 picture from California
10 January 2023
A post on Facebook claims the account holder has found a badly injured cat on the streets and is seeking help in reuniting the animal with its owner.
The post, which appeared on a Facebook group page for residents of Middlesbrough on 4 January, says: “Hi all, I’m desperately trying to find the owner of this sweet girl I picked up about half an hour ago along side road in #middlesbrough [sic]. She’s hurt, has scars all over her face, tried giving her food but she refused. Please help bump this post so she can be reunited with her parents.”
Using a reverse image search we established that the cat in the picture was actually injured in California in December 2018 after climbing into the engine bay of a car to keep warm. The cat, a male named Clark, was then dragged along the road when the driver, unaware of his presence, drove off in the vehicle.
His picture subsequently became popular with safety campaigners and has featured in many posts and memes warning drivers to check there are not cats hiding inside their vehicles before driving off. By November 2020, Clark’s facial wounds had fully healed.
Animal shelter volunteer Cathryn Little, who helped look after Clark following the accident, told Full Fact: “He’s a very lucky cat to survive. We got a kick out of seeing him go viral, but not like this post.”
We have written before about numerous hoax posts on Facebook that use misappropriated images of injured animals, children and adults in order to collect likes and shares.
Image courtesy of Mary Minetti
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the image of the cat is more than four years old and was taken in California, not Middlesbrough.