Do you know your neighbour well enough to feed your cats?

I am sure that there are many instances of cat owners giving their house keys to their neighbour so that they can feed their cats when they are away, and it works out great but there is an element of chance involved as this story highlights. I guess you don't really know your neighbour. What you know about your neighbour has been garnered through the odd casual conversation.

Nolan caught on webcam installed by Debbie Wearing-Jones. Image: Wearing-Jomes, The Sun/SWNS.

In this instance, Debbie Wearing-Jones gave the keys to her home to her neighbour William Nolan, 59, and his wife. She wanted him to feed her to cats while she was away.

Debbie appears to have no complaint about her cats being fed but, on her return, she discovered a voice recorder taped underneath a coffee table and another behind the headboard of her bed.

She was also horrified and probably had an idea who did it, but she needed hard evidence because she reported the matter to the police who said that they need better evidence. She bought a couple of cameras and turned detective.

She also hoovered the carpet in one direction so that she could check for footprints. When she viewed her video footage, she discovered that her "trusted" neighbour had planted the listening devices because he returned to her home to look for the devices that he had left. They'd be removed by Wearing-Jones.

Nolan is a former security guard with the knowledge to install these devices. He was prosecuted and tried in Birmingham Magistrates' Court. He admitted the crime and was jailed for 15 weeks on May 25, 2020.

Wearing-Jones says that she is still unsure that she has removed all the listening devices. And she feels uncomfortable now living next door to a convicted stalker. She believes that putting the listening device behind a headboard can only be for one reason; to record her having sex. She thinks that Nolan is a perv.

She said: 

"I want to make people aware that you can't trust anyone. After being neighbours for 30 years, being widowed, and then him doing this to me."

She thought they were normal friendly neighbours. She had the odd conversation with Nolan and found him a bit shy and his wife a bit chattier. She thought that they were "lovely people".

There is no suggestion that any harm came to her cats, Bellamy and Sami. Nolan appears to have done his job in that regard.

She discovered the listening and recording device under her coffee table when her partner, 64, found a black box taped underneath the table on November 7, 2020. She thought it might have been her grandson's toy but quite soon realised that it was a listening and recording device.

She said: "I felt totally violated. Then we thought how it got there. Who's put it there? And the next thing we thought was are there any more?"

The police wouldn't act on the discovery of the device because there was no sign of forced entry. As mentioned, they needed further evidence which resulted in Debbie obtaining it through a hidden webcam.

The moral for cat owners is, can you trust your neighbour to feed your cats because you don't know them well enough?