defectors

So dig this, Duster the cat, who has been on the lam since Thanksgiving night, doing God knows what, has been found thanks to a high-profile tipster, the intrepid Genesee County Manager Jay Gsell.

Duster's momma, Melissa Barone, who lives on Tracy Avenue in the city, gives credit where credit is due. But she also thanked The Batavian for the APB published Nov. 29th.

She enlisted not only our readers' help but her momma's, too, who Barone says has been "scouring" the area near Barone's home on a daily basis. This kind of resolute undauntedness is the very essence of intrepidity.

So Barone's momma, and Gsell, renowned for his institutional knowledge of the arcane bowels of county government and his pet- and people-friendly bonhomie, were in cahoots, in a manner of speaking, on the recapture of the cat.

By the way, it didn't wander very far from home sweet home, in fact, Duster was just around the kitty-corner.

Word on the street was that Duster the defector liked to hang around in the vicinity of Batavia Middle School, which is inarguably heavily populated by pals of pets.

Sure eough, Barone's momma was heading to her daughter's for dinner yesterday (Jan. 16) and she spotted a familiar-looking feline following a young miss walking in the area of the school.

"She stopped and sure enough it was Duster," Barone wrote The Batavian in an email. "He came right up to my mom purring away."

His purr reportedly sounds like the world's most expensive car -- that would be the Swedish-made Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita ($4.8M), owned by the likes of Jay Leno and Floyd Mayweather. Not too shabby for a domestic tabby-ish cat with a white bib and front-paw gloves.

Duster prolly figures if he can't have celebrity-caliber fun money, he can at least sound like millions of bucks. He can also check off 15 minutes of fame -- à la that prescient Andy Warhol -- from his bucket list.