Lost Cats

Finding Lost Cats

Happy Endings

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Happy Endings

Lost Cats Found

Pascha

For ten years, Pascha tried to get inside the home of the family who fed her.  A “stray”, they didn’t consider her their responsibility.  So when the made plans to move away, they contacted a cat rescue to take her so she wouldn’t starve.

Her rescuer found her an indoor only home with a retired couple and  felt  great thinking that she had improved Pascha’s quality of life. Checking in with the adopters a couple days after adoption, she found out that she’d actually made it worse!

Pascha had dashed out the door within minutes of arriving in her new home. The new owners  had panicked  and chased after her.  She disappeared into thick woods and was nowhere to be found.

Door to door flyers in a one mile area solicited no calls in the month that followed.  But one month later a nearby home reported seeing a similar looking cat about  1/4 mile from her escape point.  The rescuers quickly drove over and set a trap where she had been seen, and was trapped within 15 minutes.

For the entire story,  click this link.

Skeeter

Skeeter did what most indoor-only cats do when they find themselves outside.  She hid.  Her owner set 4 traps all around the large wooded acreage and baited it with smelly tuna.  But after 2 weeks he became discouraged.  All he was catching was opossums and a neighborhood cat looking for snacks.  Skeeter’s rural home was also home to coyotes, owls and bobcats and Terry felt certain she had been taken.

With encouragement, Terry continued to bait the traps.  And finally, he woke up one day to find his girl Skeeter in the trap.

Dash

When a friendly gray cat showed up at Amy’s home, she took him to her vet right away to have him scanned for a microchip.  Happily,  he was chipped!  But when the clinic called the microchip company, they were told that the chip wasn’t registered.  It was inserted by a local rescue group that was now “defunct”.  How did they figure that out?  They Googled the name of the rescue and found a person listed as the contact with a disconnected number.

So, Amy took the handsome cat home and decided to adopt him.  But first, she posted him on social media.  A CCC volunteer called and asked for the chip number to see if she could find the owner.  That turned out to easy becuase the cat had been microchipped by the rescue where she volunteered.  The rescue was NOT defunct and finding his owner took minutes.

Dash was returned to his happy owner.  He had been missing for two weeks and travelled over a mile from home!  His grateful owner promptly updated his microchip information.

To see the entire story, click this link.

Truman

The post sounded desperate.  “Please help! We’ve lost our 2-year-old cat. We’ve had him since he was a tiny kitten and really want him home. He sometimes disappears for a few days, but he always comes back. It’s been a couple weeks and we haven’t seen him… “

A cat-savvy Nextdoor user read between the lines and asked, “Is he altered?” The reply? “Well no, we were planning to have him fixed but every time we made an appointment he took off for a few days.”

Two months later, Kim remembered this post when missing cat “Truman” showed up to eat food left for another community cat. She snapped his picture and got back on Nextdoor to find the post, but it had been deleted! Fortunately, she had messaged some tips to the lost cat’s owner, and was able to reconnect with her on Facebook. She sent his photo and asked, “Is this your cat?” The owner confirmed that it was, but said she had deleted the lost cat post when she moved to another state. She hoped he could find a home because she wouldn’t be able to get him. 

Spaying and neutering does more than prevent kittens, it keeps cats home! Truman’s story demonstrates why people in rescue work so hard to get every kitten spayed / neutered before adoption. Unaltered cats and kittens are often lost when hormones lead them far from home. They tend to travel greater distances than spayed/neutered cats, so getting them home safe is much more challenging. Wandering, intact cats are distracted by hormones which puts them at higher risk to be hit by cars or taken by predators. They contract deadly viruses while fighting or mating. And when time or distance make a reunion impossible, they become one more community cat.

Truman is lucky for many reasons. Kim trapped him a few days ago, so he was safe inside for our wet and cold New Year’s Eve. A shelter could easily mistake this battle-scared roamer as a barn cat, but Kim knew he had been tame and would be adoptable if she could get him in a safe spot. Happily, TNR veteral “Gillian” got him neutered and into a great no-kill rescue.  Today, Truman is a happy indoor boy and his roaming days are behind him.

For the entire story,  click this link.

Mr. Goodbar

Enroute to a pet store adoption site, this cute tuxedo kitten flew out the carrier door when a volunteer transporter opened the carrier door  in the parking lot.  That was the first mistake.  The second was when she chased him across the parking lot trying to catch him.  Mr. Goodbar vanished in a very dangerous area.

Although he wasn’t a CCC cat, several trappers in the area offered to help trap him.  For displaced cats, traps are the single most effective way of getting them back.  Knowing that he was unlikely to cross a 4 lane highway, traps were set on the same side as the pet store.  But one week later, he was not in the traps and there had not beed a single sighting.

At the start of the second week, a volunteer noticed a drainage pipe concealed  in the grass and it appeared to go under the highway. Could he have gone in the pipe?  She didn’t know, but decided to  pass out flyers door to door in the neighborhood across the highway from the pet store. 

As she knocked on the doors and spoke to the residents, nobody reported seeing him.  But she later received a phone call from someone she HAD spoken with.  “You know, I have’t seen a cat in my yard, but I did see a dark colored cat dash under a bush across the cul de sac. I didn’t think about it when you came to our door It probably isn’t him, but…”   

With no other leads, traps were set under the bush and the home’s  owner volunteered to help monitor it. Two more weeks passed with volunteers rebating the traps twice daily.   

Finally, after more than 3 weeks, a young tuxedo went in the trap.  And a quick trip to the vet verified that the microchip number matched.

Monet

If you are a trapper, you know the agony of that one kitten who won’t go in the trap.  Monet was that hold out.  Her littermates were already spayed, socialized and adopted into homes by the time she was captured.

Althogh shy, Monet tamed down enough to find a home with a single woman. And her trapper breathed a sigh of relief untl she got this phone call.    “Monet slipped outside while people were working on the house! ” 

Still spooky, she was hiding someplace outside and her owner wouldn’t be able to pick her up even if she found her. So a trap was the only option for bringing her back inside. 

The trapper was afraid she would never go in a trap again after being so difficult to get the first time. Monet DID go in, but not while her new owner was home.  And the unthinkable happened.   A man doing construction work on a neighbor’s house saw the poor cat in a trap and felt sorry for it. Was someone going to take her to a shelter? Was she going to be put down? He couldn’t stand the thought, so he put the trapped cat in his truck and took her to his rural home 20 miles away. And then he turned her loose in the woods near his house…in the middle of winter. He thought he was doing her a favor.

It took 6 weeks for someone to call on the door-to-door flyers the trapper had passed out over an impossibly large area.  “Is your calico still missing?”  The trapper had her leave canned food about 10 feet inside the house.  A rope tied to the open door closed it behind Monet when she went in for the food.  

Gracie

Eight year old Gracie slipped out into the night in mid December. A well loved indoor-only cat, Gracie had no street smarts. Petit and with a lean build, she also didn’t have any extra fat to help her through cold nights and missed meals.

As soon as she noticed Gracie missing, owner Rachel contacted a friend in the CCC and arranged to get traps and Wyze Cam WiFi cameras. She set and baited traps in her yard and near a wetland by her house. Although it was cold out, the door she escaped from was left open when possible and the garage door was permanently left opened about 6 inches.

Cameras monitored the yard and garage in case she showed up. Rachel and some volunteers passed out flyers door-to-door and flashlights were used to carefully search under decks, sheds and bushes within about a 300 yard radius of home. Some lost pet owners are passive–they sit back and wait for someone to find their cat. Luckily, Gracie did NOT have this type of owner. Rachel wanted her cat back and was willing to do the hard work to make it happen.

Christmas and New Years passed. Neighbor cats visited the yard and garage, but there was no sign of Gracie. Baiting the traps seemed like a hopeless task. If Gracie was nearby, wouldn’t she go in the trap? To make matters worse, a Craigslist post warned of a cat taken by a coyote nearby and two owls were spotted hanging out near her home. Predation on hiding cats is rare, but it sure made the wait more painful.

Some indoor-only cats stay hidden for 3 or 4 weeks and that is exactly what Gracie did. On January 6th, Gracie finally came out of hiding in the pre-dawn hours and entered a trap on the family’s back porch. How far had she traveled? Gracie isn’t saying, but we suspect she heard Rachel’s soft calls and her shaking treat bag sounds while she searched at some nearby homes the day before and followed her scent trail home.

For the entire story, click this link.

Bond

As an outdoor access cat, Bond knew his territory and he was great about staying close to home and showing up for meals.  Great until he didn’t.  Bond’s owners did everything right.  The made sure his microchip info was up-to-date.  They posted him on social media and checked the local shelter regularly.  For 6 months, there was no clue as to why he disappeared.

Bond’s story resembles so many we hear.  He was taken in by a not-too-distant family who thought he was a stray.  Hungry and starved for attention, they took him in and felt that they had done a good deed.  Six months later, they took him in to their veterinarian for vaccines.  The vet scanned him for a microchip and found out he wasn’t a stray–he was a very missed member of a family. The adopters returned him to his grateful owners.

For the entire story, click this link.

Percy

Trappers are often asked to travel a distance  from home to help with a trapping.  So when one of our CCC trappers saw this post on a neighborhood Facebook page, she thought it would be the easiest trapping ever.  It’s close to home!

“Our indoor cat Percy got outside.  Please let us know if you see him.”  The post showed a comfortably plump “Percy” snoozing on their sofa. The trapper messaged the owners with an offer of traps and advised them to leave their doors open, but when she checked back there was no reply. Thinking they missed the message, she repeated the offer as a page comment. No reply. Then she knocked on their door. No answer. Hmm, did they find Percy already?

Three weeks later, someone commented on the post asking if the cat had been found. There was an immediate reply, “No, we think coyotes got him.”

For the CCC volunteer, the lack of responsiveness to the offer of traps was frustrating. Since Percy’s owners wouldn’t communicate or give permission to set traps in their yard, she knocked on the house next door and asked permission to set traps there. They agreed, and Percy came out from under a neighbor’s deck and into the tuna-baited trap within 15 minutes. Yes, it was that fast! She walked over to Percy’s home and knocked on the door. No reply. So she walked back him with Percy still in the trap and posted this photo of him in the trap on the Facebook page.   The owners immediately ran out to see if it was really Percy.

He had lost a few pounds, but he recognized his owners right away and began meowing happily. The trapper couldn’t hold her tongue, “If you’d replied to my offer to trap him 3 weeks ago, he may not have had to go through this.” Their sheepish reply, “We were sure coyotes got him right away. We thought it was hopeless.”

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