In 1971 Hal Meadow, a geophysicist who lived in New Orleans, was sent to Singapore on business. There he found four, brown-ticked cats in the Lo Yang district. he paid a crewman on a ship that was bound for the United States to transport these cats to his friend Tommy Brodie, a woman living in Houston, Texas. There were no import or export papers sent with the animals, nor was there any other record of their origin.