The media and the circus that ensued.
Early on a news crew from FOX channel 5 came down and did a story on what you are allowed to do when you have a live animal stuck in a national landmark building. Apparently, the story had a huge response and by the next day there were a few more news crews there. You saw NBC, ABC, and CBS by the end of that day and the NY Post and NY Daily News too. But as each day passed the interest level got bigger and bigger and the site got goofier and goofier. I knew things were getting big when newspapers from London, India, and Japan wanted to interview me, along with CNN and the New York Times too.
The circus comes to town.
Stories such as these bring out all types. Some people wanted to support us while others were angry we were there. The mob around our site could reach fifty people at times and someone was even hired to wear a mouse suit down at the site. We started getting bombarded on a daily basis with advice. Now, this advice ranged from harmless to crazy. One person had never been to the site, never seen the building but they were convinced they knew where Molly was based on their horoscope? A small sampling of what we were told to do; put a ferret in the basement; sing to her; use French cat food in the traps as opposed to the version and many others. By the end, we discussed the idea of making a”suggestion box” and putting it ten blocks away from the site. While many people tried to help us with these ideas they were usually just draining the energy of people donating their time to save Molly. We started to call this the “here kitty, kitty” mentality. Everyone thought this cat was hiding when it was obviously asearched and rescued.