PAINTED POST, N.Y. (WENY) -- Recently, there has been an uptick of Painted Post residents reporting that their cats are going missing on West High Street. 

Britany Elsey, a cat owner in Painted Post, said her neighborhood noticed cats were going missing on August 20th. Elsey said this is a growing concern for local cat owners.  

“Our cat went missing and, as a neighborhood, we all found that kind of weird because he likes to visit the neighbors...and then once word got out that Max was missing, we started to learn that there were a few other neighbors that were also missing cats of their own,” she said.  

Elsey's cat, Max, went missing nearly two weeks ago. After Elsey began asking questions around the neighborhood, she learned that others were having similar problems. 

“People started to come out and say, 'Oh my goodness...I'm missing a cat too and I only live a couple of doors down,' or 'I live across the street and I'm also missing a cat,' and one of my neighbors was missing two cats,” she said.  

With help, Elsey located Max in Gang Mills, New York. However, he was not in the healthiest condition. 

“He had a cloudy eye when we found him...we removed over 20 ticks out of him the first night,” she said. “He has an ulcer in his eye and he's on quite a few medications, right now, to clean up some infections.”  

Elsey said the neighborhood is rallying together to help find more missing cats. Of the four cats that have gone missing so far, two have been located.

WENY News contacted the Painted Post Police Department and the Steuben County Sheriff's Office to learn more about these missing cats' reports. The Steuben County Sheriff's Office said this is an ongoing investigation and gave no further details. 

“There was a complaint made,” said Painted Post Police Officer Shawn Copp. “We started to do an investigation into that since it may, possibly, involve somebody that is involved with the Village.”  

Elsey said she is going to be keeping a closer eye on Max, but she is still worried. 

“It's a tough thing to try and tackle...keeping an eye on your pet when you feel like you shouldn't need to,” she said.