Roaming cats gave Taunton’s Musgrove Park Hospital a major headache back in March 2005 and the Somerset County Gazette was there to tell the tale.
The automatic doors of the hospital were allowing cats to come and go as they pleased, wandering the wards until being caught and chucked back out the front door.
Daisy Gibbs alerted the Somerset County Gazette when she saw a black and white cat saunter into the hospital and make itself comfortable on a trolley of clean sheets.
Mrs Gibbs was awaiting a pre-operative assessment when the cat ambled in.
She said that it "jumped up and curled up on a trolley", according to her examiner the cat "lived in the hospital".
Mark Wall, the Taunton and Somerset hospital spokesperson at the time, commented how "there’s no such thing as a hospital pet".
The course of action for the hospital was to remain vigilant, make sure cupboard doors were kept closed and clean sheets were covered up with plastic bags.
In the coming week the County Gazette managed to unveil the identity of the offender.
Mally, the black and white cat, was trying to escape the cold within the walls of the hospital.
Mally’s owner, Anne James, was completely unaware of Mally’s daytime roving until a friend who worked at Musgrove recognised the cat.
Anne commented that "Mally is a little monkey" and that she was "forever getting calls from the hospital".
Apparently Mally had a penchant for the accident and emergency department but was also fond of maternity and oncology.
Mally’s misadventures don’t end with the hospital though, as she was known to follow Anne’s son Russell to Bishop Henderson School and was even found on the dashboard of a neighbour's car.
