VILLAGE PET PAGE

The Story of Thackery Binx

By Garance E. H. Arditti

Thanks to Greenwich Village Animal Hospital practice manager Eric Shepherd for the tip on this interesting rescue story about a cat in the Village.

It was the last Tuesday of July, this past summer 2025. I was coming back from work around 8:30 p.m., getting off at Christopher Street and taking Grove Street towards Bedford Street, which is where I live. I had my Airpods on with music playing and just after passing Emmett’s on Grove, the music was changing which allowed me to hear the word ‘cat’ – I paused the music, looked up and saw a little group of people around a vintage-looking Subaru SUV parked on the street. I approached the vehicle and was told that a cat had been heard meowing from somewhere in that car for the past three days.

Before I knew it, I was under the Subaru using my phone flashlight trying to take a glance at that mysterious cat that no one had seen but only heard. Quite the exploit for me. Being the OCD clean freak that I am, I thought of my whole body laying down on the disgusting street warmed by that hot summer evening. That thought immediately disappeared when, after using cat food as bait and playing cat sounds on my phone, I saw a tiny grey kitten head with big green eyes stare at me for an instant from some hole under the car and then vanish.

The police were there but it took almost a couple hours before the fire department could come. At the same time, a VERY motivated lady had gone to the building address the police had found corresponding to the registered owner of the car. She rang the bell of every single apartment on her way up the stairs and came back gloriously with the owners, a nice couple. They were shocked and quite scared that the kitten may have been badly injured. So, the owner opened the hood because it is the most common place to find hiding cats and one of the firemen was standing ready to grab whatever he would find.

Then, everything went crazy. That brave fireman was clearly not used to cats, and grabbed a tiny dirty very frail kitten and as we were all extending arms for him to hand it to one of us, he slowly placed it on the ground. BIG mistake… but he did not know better. The kitten ran as fast as lightning to the other side of the street and vanished. The group of outraged ladies started screaming at the poor fireman, everyone got very angry, all the firemen got back in their truck fuming with frustration and beeping at us. The police men and women looked at us ─ kind of shrugging their shoulders, sorry for everybody involved and left.

So there I was, still with a group of kind and concerned people, now in the complete dark around 10:30 p.m. and no cat. It took us 30 minutes or more to agree on the one car on the other side of the street where we thought the kitten might be. This time it was a Lexus. We called back the police, gave them the plate number, and they were able to contact the owner, who ended up showing up not so long after.

Everything went very fast after that, the owner opened the hood of his car ─ and me and another lady, with an old raggedy towel someone had handed us, quickly grabbed the little kitten which was indeed in that car between the engine and some hoses.

The kitten scratched us badly, it was absolutely terrified, but none of us let it go. That very kind lady had been saying she would be happy to foster it, and she lived right across the street, yes in front of the parked Subaru. So we walked sideways like crabs to her building, together holding the kitten. When we arrived to her apartment, I called my boyfriend to bring a litter box, some sand and some food. I had all these supplies at home, because my little Siamese Ziggy was waiting for me. Well yes, I am a huuuuge cat lady. And when I was doing my last year of college in Toronto and Covid happened, I was completely alone. My father convinced me to stay ─ rather than going back to Paris ─ by getting me a kitten. Ziggy Stardust is my girl. I take her absolutely everywhere I go.

Anyway, my boyfriend arrived at the lady’s apartment, I was holding the little kitten who was in fact quite black, just greyed out by the dirt and dust. The lady looked at us and with the highest honesty, explained how this situation was not ideal for her, asking if we would keep the kitten instead. I looked at my boyfriend since he had not chosen the cat life but it was imposed on him when I showed up with Ziggy (whom he loves more than anything in the world), and he said ‘ok’. So there we were, going back to our home with the supplies he had brought AND the kitten.

We put her in my bathtub and 20 minutes later my boyfriend was in the tub with her on his chest, giving her food which she was happily eating. It took a good long visit at Greenwich Village Animal Hospital to have her rid of parasites and fleas. Thankfully, she did not have any viruses or diseases. She must have been born on the street, a stray cat ─ maybe from a bodega ─ and ended up completely alone in a car engine at 2 months old.

When the time came to introduce her to Ziggy, Ziggy was so distraught that she started a hunger strike for three days and ended up at the vet with anti-anxiety meds. A month later, the four of us (yes, the two cats in their respective bags) were at my family home in South of France, then Spain, Italy, etc.

My boyfriend, being a big fan of the 1993 Hocus Pocus film, named her Thackery Binx. Well…she did bear the name Suba for the first couple weeks as she was first found in a Subaru, but why keep the trauma all her life? Now, Ziggy and Binx are like sisters, Ziggy almost constantly exasperated by Binx, and Binx obsessed with Ziggy, always trotting behind her, jumping over her, and cuddling with her as much as Ziggy will allow. We never gave Binx away, she became part of the family (after very short consideration!).

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