The staff at Douglas County Animal Care and Services are accustomed of receiving calls about dumped animals. Recently, however, they got a heartbreaking call. Liz Begovich, a supervisor at the organization, found a pet carrier one morning in front of the shelter with a poor cat inside. The cat’s fur was such a mess they couldn’t see what animal was inside at first! The situation was bad – the cat couldn’t move because of the fur and was quite overweight because of it.

Liz took the cat to a vet right away, who immediately shaved a whopping 4.5 pounds of fur off him! The staff named the cat Bob Marley and once his hair was off, it started moving around freely.

After years of neglect, the cat has a loving home and is recovering well. He was adopted in only a few days and is quite handsome as you can see. Authorities are now looking for information on Bob’s previous owner and fortunately, the guy who dumped him was caught on a CCTV camera. “We’d really like to know what happened. We’d like to know if the man has other pets like Bob, who are suffering as well,” Liz says.

The truth should emerge soon. At the moment, Bob is doing great – here’s a gallery of his heartbreaking story.

An unidentified man was caught on CCTV leaving an animal carrier in front of an animal shelter recently

The shelter staff’s first guess was that it must be a dog, given that dogs are generally less fastidious about their grooming than cats

“We couldn’t turn him around because of the way he was shoved in the carrier”

“So we took the top off and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s a cat!’ I’ve never seen a cat in that sort of condition”

The cat was a prisoner of its own fur, barely able to move under the tangled, matted layers

“They shaved about 4.5 pounds of hair off of him. It filled a full-size kitchen trash bag”

It turned out the formerly dreadlocked cat, who the shelter cheekily named Bob Marley, was also severely overweight

The new dashingly handsome Bob was put up for adoption, and now has a loving home