A "blog" is different things for different people. I'm going to use this space as a sort of "search diary." Maybe some folks will find it interesting reading--who knows. One thing you need to know about a blog is that it goes "backwards." The most recent entries are first, so if you read from top to bottom, you'll be getting the updates before you read about the searches! Pets' names are kept, but human names are all changed to "Mommy" and "Daddy."
July 2008
7-19-08 - Mr. Chips
Mr. Chips is a five-year old male orange tabby/Siamese mix in St Helena. Just as I was pulling up to Nilum, I got a phone call about Mr. Chips, and since I was already half-way to St Helena I agreed to come out. Mr Chips lives with an elderly lady who has dementia with short-term memory loss. I was contacted by his owner's Daughter. He's been gone for about 9 days, and his disappearance happened to coincide with the firing of Mommy's caregiver, who was apparently quite attached to him.
I scented Loki, and he took me right to Mr. Chips' backyard, and to his deck. There was a lot of residual scent there, even nine days later! We also checked across the street, where he was known to go, and there seemed to be residual scent there, too. We checked up the street, and got nothing. The house is one-away from the corner, and across that street is a cemetery. Mr. Chips was known to go into the cemetery regularly. We checked inside the cemetery, but we didn't get any scent--so it seems pretty clear that he's not wandering around loose.
At that point, Daughter wanted me to check for signs that he might have gotten taken by a coyote. She'd seen one running down the street just a block away, about a month ago, and there's at least one other cat missing in the area right now. The cemetery is bounded by a creek (dry this time of year) on two sides. It's more of a mini-river than a creek--it's pretty wide. We did a "quick" walkthrough of the creek at the cemetery area, and we found several piles of old coyote scat, but nothing recent. I mentioned to Daughter that it didn't seem like the coyotes were hanging out in this area, so we probably wouldn't find any evidence. It would have taken us several hours to thoroughly cover just the creek, just around the cemetery.
We went back into the cemetery, and I did a somewhat thorough search of the section near the gate by the house. We found a dead mole, a deer vertebra, a fried chicken leg, and two piles of bird feathers, but no sign of kitty-trauma. We certainly didn't cover it 100%--we would have been a couple of hours checking just that area, if it was to be 100%.
It was very hot at that point, and we were looking at rapidly diminishing returns, so I decided to call the search. We had ruled out that he's around loose nearby, so that strengthens the caregiver-kidnapping or coyote scenarios. There are still other possibilities, mainly that he's loose a couple blocks away, so Daughter is going to do a little more directed advertising to try and rule that one out. As I was talking with her after the search, and getting more info on the caregiver situation, that became the more and more likely scenario. There were details she was giving which just made the whole thing seem fishy. I told her to do a police report now. The police would probably be reluctant to take a report, but if she insists that a cat is worth a monetary value, just like any piece of jewelery or a tool or anything else, and that she doesn't expect them to actually *do* anything, they'll eventually give in just to get rid of her. If the caregiver does have the cat, and if Daughter does a police report, then Daughter is the injured party when it comes time for official intervention. If they don't do a police report, then the caregiver will do one for harrassment, and then *she* will be the injured party! It's all about who starts the paper trail first.
I'm crossing my fingers that they get Mr. Chips back, but I just have a feeling it's going to take a "real" detective, not a "pet" detective to make that happen.
7-19-08 - Nilum
Nilum is a seven-year old Abyssinian in Napa. Daddy lives in Novato, but he's out of town (in South America!) right now, so he left Nilum with Mommy (his ex). Nilum was described both by Daddy and Mommy as very aggressive, and very fearful. If he's in his normal situation, with Daddy, he's fine. If he's out of his normal routine, though, and something happens to upset him, he's all claws and teeth, even with Mommy!
Mommy had a window open a crack, and Nilum pushed his way right through the screen, about six days ago. The next morning, Mommy saw him and was *this* close to grabbing him, when he ran away. That night, a neighbor two properties away (this is country, where everybody has acreage and vineyards) saw him. There was a possible sighting about a mile away the next day, and a possible "hearing" the morning after that (which would have been two days ago) not too far from the sighting.
Daddy and Mommy had lived about four miles (as the crow flies) from where Mommy is now, and Daddy takes/has taken Nilum on walks on leash and harness several times a day. The sighting and "hearing" were both in line with the old place, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that Nilum has shown up at the old place, in another week or two. I told both Mommy and Daddy that mostly my job today would be in getting "negatives," or validating that he's *not* hanging out anywhere we know (or think) he's been. And, in fact, that's what we got--a bunch of negatives.
I started Loki out on scent at Mommy's house, and he got a very vague trail leading down the road, in the direction that she'd seen him run. I'm comfortable that it was his trail, but it definitely wasn't fresh. Next we went to the "hearing" spot. Someone had called because they heard a cat yowling two mornings in a row, and Nilum definitely has a good yowl. We checked all around, but Loki didn't seem to think that Nilum had been there. The scent would certainly be fresher there than at Mommy's house, so if he had been there, we should have gotten some sort of indication. There were plenty of other cats, dogs, and even sheep there--and Nilum's personality doesn't seem to be one that would have him sticking around for two days at someplace so noisy. Next we went to the sighting. Loki seemed to get a vague trail leading away from the spot where he was supposedly seen, but we got nothing fresh there, either.
I decided I wanted to check out the "old place" next. It just seems too far for him to have gotten yet, but definitely not too far for him to get in another week or two. Nilum had lived there for a while, so there would probably even still be some amount of residual scent, but if there was anything super-fresh we'd know it was him. Sure enough, Loki took me through the field where he used to hang out, and to the creek. At the creek, I saw a flash of something moving fast, and it seemed to be grey. Loki found a trail which he was very, very interested in following. Now, I also saw a baby deer right by the trail Loki was following, so I just don't know whether he was interested in the deer scent or if he was following Nilum. Sometimes he lies to me, when he finds something interesting in the middle of a lot of nothing. I do think it's "possible" that he's made it that far already, but just not likely. I told Mommy that I'd give it a 15% chance that Loki was actually following Nilum's trail through there.
We went back to Mommy's, with a brief stop at the house two properties over. We did get scent there, but nothing fresh at all. This guy is definitely on the move. The only thing we can do is to step-up with the advertising and hope that someone else sees him. We have to hope that he either makes it to the old place and stops there, or that he finds some other place to stop for a while, where they get a sighting and can go get him. Mommy also said that there's a woman at the old place who does TNR (trap, neuter, return), and I suggested she ask if the woman can start some trapping out at the creek, and continue for several weeks.
This one is going to be a waiting game, and it's going to be up to Nilum to decide whether or not he even wants to be seen by anyone.
7-18-08 - Update on Cece - She's Home!!!
On the 16th, the day after the search, Mommy and Sister got three separate phone calls that people had seen Cece at the trail under the BART tracks, as well as near the funky intersection where we turned west! I'm generally pretty confident in Loki's work, but it's awesome when a trail gets validated like that! I have no doubt that she made it to the big park and then turned around and came back to a place she'd been before.
On the 17th, they got two calls that she'd been seen farther to the east, pretty much straight up the street where she'd been the day before. I went out on the 18th in the morning, to see if we could trail her. We actually got a trail of about 4 miles, running from the spot where she had been seen first, working our way through the spot where she'd been seen second, and continuing on down to (and through) the University. We actually came to an intersection where Loki seemed very confused--he kept taking me around a building, into a parking lot, and then plopping down on a patch of grass.
It was right about then that Sister called to say that they'd had a sighting that morning at the same area where the sighting was the previous night. The crazy girl had circled back again! I bet she spent some time around that corner where Loki was confused, and then doubled-back or found a different way around. Just as Mommy was coming with the car to pick us up and take us back up to the main park, she got a call that one of the friends had made it to the park and Cece was there! He got her with no problem!
The strange thing was, that originally, I had told Sister that we'd meet this morning at the corner of E. and E. I don't know why I picked that particular intersection--it was in "the area" of where the sightings had been, but there was no particular significance. However, when she was found, that's the exact intersection where it was!!!
7-18-08 - Update on Elmer
I talked with Grampy, and he said that all of the flyers and posters were taken down by the city, and they were told that if they put any more up they'll be fined. I guess that a couple of big Garage Sale signs are fine, but the mass-posting done for this guy got their attention in a bad way.
I also heard that there was a possible sighting within 1 - 2 days of when he went lost. This was a young boy, but he identified that the dog he saw looked like the picture, was bigger than their Husky, and was thin like their Whippet. This was in the opposite direction of the field where we got scent, but, like I had told them, there was definitely a chance that he circled around and we just didn't catch it--there was a lot of area to cover to do checks, and it was completely impossible for us to cover everything.
7-18-08 - Update on Spiketta
I got an email from Mommy. She did get in touch with the "rescue group," and they say that they sent out her info to all the members of the group. They also claim that they do true TNR (trap-neuter-return) on all of the cats, and that they don't keep any of them. I have to wonder, then, why the neighbor said that the friend has 45 cats in her home? Where did they all come from?
And we still have the mystery of what happens to all of the outdoor cats in the neighborhood. Yes, it's surrounded by open-space (with coyotes), but I've been in quite a few neighborhoods which have just as much openspace, and even less "neighborhood," and "all of" the cats in the area don't go missing eventually. And the cats in this area have gone missing over the course of years, not just one or two months during coyote-pup season, now and then. When it's something that consistent it almost has to involve human intervention.
I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that someone nearby has her, and she'll escape from that house and make it back home sooner or later.
7-17-08 - Update on Sander - He's Home!!!
I got an email from Daddy R. Sander is home! I don't have any details--I'm hoping Daddy R. emails me with some more info!
7-17-08 - Update on Patsy
I got an email from Daddy J. Seems like Daddy B. is not dealing well with the stress, and has gone into grief avoidance. He's sure that Patsy has found someplace good to live and is happy there, and he doesn't feel that he can continue searching. I need to respect his coping mechanisms, but I just really still think that Patsy isn't far, and persistence will pay off in this case. I have to hope that he comes back on his own, but that doesn't always happen.
The "average" return-rate (depending on which statistics you read) for lost cats are about 15%. A large part of what I do is empower people with the tools and knowledge that they need to get the cats back for themselves. My clients have an overall success rate of 60 - 70%. Quite a number of the ones who don't get their cats back (or know exactly what happened to them) are in situations where, when I leave, we all have a feeling that they're not going to see the animal again. There are a small percentage who do try, very hard, and they "should have" gotten their kitties back--but even the best laid plans fail if the kitties have different ideas. And then there are the group who just stop trying, *way* too early. Lost cats don't work on the human's schedule. The human has to be more patient and stubborn than the cat.
I wish I could make everybody have that stubbornness and patience, but some people can only cope by shutting off the piece that's hurting--which means deciding to stop searching. I do hope that Patsy finds his way home on his own.
7-17-08 - Update on Cosmo - Search Complete
I heard from Mommy today. She still hasn't found Cosmo, and the kitty under the deck didn't turn out to be her. Within a week after the search, two other outdoor-access cats went missing in the area. Mommy has decided to call off the search, with the large amount of evidence pointing to predator. I do want her to hold a small piece of hope, but I (very reluctantly) do have to agree that it's probably best for her emotionally to pull back at this point. No, not every cat which goes missing in a active-predator zone should be assumed to have been taken, but, unfortunately, I don't disagree with her decision to stop the search, in this case.
7-15-08 - Cece
Cece is a four-year old Australian Cattle Dog mix. She lives in Piedmont, but Mommy's sister and Sister's husband were watching her overnight. Husband had taken Cece and his/Sister's dog to a restaurant in Albany. It was late at night, around 10 pm, two days ago. (This is one of the few restaurants still open at that time of night.) He tied the dogs up outside, and when he came out a half-hour later Cece was gone. She'd chewed through her leash.
She's known to have a very anxious personality. She was adopted from the shelter as a surrender when her owner died. They don't know her background, but guess that she was never out of her previous owner's sight. Mommy has had her for 1.5 years, and says she's much better, but she still has a lot of separation anxiety and other anxiety. She chews up the house, and even will chew through her leash while waiting at the vet's!
There had been a sighting going north from that spot, and, sure enough, when I scented Loki we went north. We went for about a half-mile, and then the road kind of made a big loop...and so did the trail. Now we were coming back toward the street where she was lost, but a few blocks down. She might have figured out where she was, but the road also made a diagonal, so while we started out the return-leg a block or two away, we ended up getting back to the road where she was lost about six blocks up. We continued on to the next main road, then turned west. We went west until we got to the BART tracks (which ran overhead) where we went south again. We continued south until there was a funky intersection, with roads coming in to each other at diagonals, and then we went west again. We continued west, even across a fairly busy street (although at 11pm it might not have been), until we got to the freeway. There, the trail turned south again until we got to a very large park with a huge "lagoon." The trail went along one side of the lagoon and then just kind of stopped. We couldn't pick it up again, and, quite frankly, there was way too much ground to cover to go back and look for off-shoots. The whole trail was about five miles long!
I gave Sister a plan to follow on where to put the big posters--I know that Berkeley tends to pull things down right away when they're put up on public poles, so we'll see how long they last. I told Sister to try to put them all on private property--then the city has no business taking them down (but that wouldn't stop them, I'm sure...) It's going to be hard to advertise for her if we can't keep the signs up. She could be anywhere--she's a fast, far traveler.
7-12-08 - Elmer
Elmer is a ten-year old Greyhound in Lincoln, above Marysville. Mommy has had him for about five years, and he was repeatedly described as being very friendly, very much a people-dog, who *loves* kids! He's starting to get cataracts and a little bit of arthritis. Two days ago, Mommy had a house-guest who left and didn't make sure that the door was latched all the way. Mommy got home 15 minutes after the guest left, and the door was open, and Elmer was gone. The other Greyhound in the home was still there, though!
I scented Loki, and he took me down the street and then turned. He became a bit confused there, and I remembered that Mommy had said that she tries to walk the dogs around the condo-complex regularly. Later, when I asked if that was the route, she said yes, it was. When I took Loki back out to the previous corner, he picked the trail right up again. It went out of the complex and immediately across a street to a HUGE empty field. He took me straight across the field to a walking-trail, where many people walk their dogs. This trail is right up against a section of slough--this section is pretty shallow, not much more than a series of puddles. Loki took me along the slough until we got to a little playground (on the neighborhood side), and a ton of large coyote tracks (on the slough side). We searched back and forth but didn't seem to get any other side-trail leading off.
We walked back out to the street, went back to the complex, and started again. Interestingly enough, Loki took me the same way out of the complex, across the street at the same spot, but then in a slightly different direction! This direction landed us in Jackrabbit Central Station! Once we got through that major distraction point, there didn't seem to be any more Elmer trail... I have a feeling that guy was out in that field doing circles, chasing animals every which way. I bet that if I'd started Loki again, he'd have taken me a third way through the field...
We checked around the condo-complex on the other three sides, but we didn't find anything. We drove farther down the field and checked the home developments on either side. It was such a huge area, it wasn't even remotely possible to check every which way he might have come out of the field, but we did our best.
I just have a feeling that this guy got picked up by someone. He was described several times as very friendly, and I just get the feeling that he spent time in that field, probably got tired, and went back out to the road or into one of the home-developments. Yes, it's also possible that he's still loose, miles away, and for another Greyhound I might make that possibility higher. But, for this guy, I'm putting my money on someone having him.
The Greyhound Rescue Group has done a good job of putting up flyers. They're 8.5 x 11, but at least they're yellow. I also gave Mommy (and Grammy and Grampy) locations for big, neon posters. I saw several garage-sale signs, but they also said that the developments in the area are picky about people putting up flyers. We'll see how long things last. I gave it a 75% probability that he got picked up in or near that field, or that he went farther down to the west (it just keeps going and going). That means that they should put 75% of their effort into that area, but certainly not ignore any other areas. There was just too much area for us to cover to make sure he didn't circle around somehow.
7-11-08 - Tyson
Tyson is an indoor-only cat in San Francisco, right across from Golden Gate Park. He somehow got out four days ago, from the third-floor apartment. At first, Mommy thought that he must have gotten out the back door, but then just today she spoke with a neighbor who remembers hearing someone outside the front window saying "Oh my gosh, that cat just fell out the window!" When I checked the window, there was an awning from the second story, directly below, and there were scratch marks on the sill. Seems pretty plausible that Tyson fell (or jumped) onto the awning and then spent some time trying to jump back in.
Unfortunately, during the time I was there, they had the immediately across-the-street section of the park completely closed off for some sort of kids' sporting event kickoff celebration. They had security buttoned up tight. At first that didn't seem to matter, because the trail did go across the street but then seemed to go down the block. Oddly enough, it seemed to go right into a laundry-place! We checked past the store, up to the next corner and around the corner, and we got nothing. We went back into the laundromat, and Loki was nuts! The guys were very nice and let us poke around, but there weren't too many places for a cat to go. They did have a back-door, though, and when we went through the back door Loki seemed to be on the trail again!
The back area was a parking-lot, and on one side of the lot was the ranger-station for the park. The ranger was nice enough to let us check all around the area, under the portable building, around the trash, etc. No kitty. We went out and checked further area, but Loki didn't seem to think Tyson had been any further. We did area-searching of a few probable locations, anyway. Then we went back to Mommy's apartment and checked in the other direction. Loki only seemed to get scent one or two units down, so I don't think that Tyson went that way. We checked Mommy's backyard and the yards two doors down, but got nothing.
I really wanted to get into the closed-off section, but they just weren't letting anybody in. I was looking in over the little gate, to get a feel for where he might have ended up, and one guard actually started yelling at me, as though I was breaking windows or something. He said just about the "most clever thing" I'd heard all day: "We've got kids in here, you know!" Gosh, I didn't know that they were contagious! Next time I'm around kids, I'll be sure to have my vaccines. Like I'm going to be able to put one in my fanny-pack and walk away with one! (Like I'd want to!)
So, we went around to the other side, and there was a police sub-station. They were nice enough to let us poke around, and we did seem to get a trail leading out of one particular gate. We went out of the police-lot, and Loki sure seemed intent on following a trail around the park, to the gardening center. We didn't find Tyson there, but Loki was interested in trying to get into the recycle-place immediately next door. Of course, that was closed, but it sure looked like a good place for a cat to hide!
We didn't get any trail leading away from that area, so I told Mommy when things quieted down later that evening, she needed to go back out and see if he had come out. I suggested she do feeding stations at the recycle/gardening area, as well as at the ranger area. I gave her more areas to do door-to-door flyers and other sorts of advertising. My feeling is that he's not far, but with all the noise and commotion of that particular part of the park, he's either hiding well, or he's going to keep getting pushed farther and farther away. Let's hope that Mommy gets him back before that happens.
7-9-08 - Kimmy
Kimmy is a 16-year old Pekinese in Danville. She's pretty much deaf, her eyes are going, she's got arthritis in her back legs, and she's starting to show signs of dementia. Two days ago, Mommy let her out back to potty, and she didn't ask to come back in right away. After a few hours, Mommy went out to check on her and realized that the back gate (which doesn't latch properly) was open, and Kimmy was gone. They have put up a handful of (small) flyers around the area and Mommy has done a little bit of door-to-door. They don't feel that she could have gone very far due to her arthritis, so they haven't done much out of the immediate few blocks.
I started Loki in the backyard at the gate (which actually goes out onto the next street). He took me to the corner, turned the corner, and then dead-ended. Kimmy lives in a new development, so there are still model homes, and the trail stopped at the row of model homes. I told Mommy that, whether or not we picked anything up anywhere else, she should try to find out whether the sales company would be willing to send a letter to the people who visited the model homes on Monday mid-day, asking if they remember seeing a Pekinese.
We backtracked to check for off-shoots, and, sure enough, we found one. It seems that she came back up (on the other side of the street) toward her street but wasn't able to figure out that's where she needed to go, so she went one more block and then turned in the wrong direction. This trail went about a quarter mile, in a straight line. That made total sense--if she's starting to have a little bit of dementia, and if she's hard of vision, she's not going to be doing much exploring. The trail got to a larger intersection, and Loki kitty-cornered me to the corner of a very large school-field. There, he stopped.
I let him rest and then asked him if he was sure that the trail was done, and he seemed hesitant, but he actually did continue with the trail. He took me around the edge of the school, around the corner, and to the school parking lot. It was apparent, though, that the "scent quality" had changed. My guess is that someone was in the field, saw her laying on the piece of grass, went all the way around, and then picked her up and brought her to the parking lot.
Mommy and Daddy hadn't done any advertising at all in this area, so I gave them instructions on where to post. They didn't think that she could have gone this far because of her arthritis, and it took some convincing to get them to hear that when she's in fight-or-flight, her adrenalin is up, and she's not even feeling the arthritis. And, if she's confused, and doesn't know where to go, the confusion will also off-set any physical symptoms. And, in reality, that patch of grass was the first nice place to lay down in the whole quarter-mile distance.
I'm pretty confident that someone has this girl, so now we need to hope that whoever it is fesses up and brings her back!
7-9-08 - Patsy
Patsy is a 10-year old male Burmese cat in Oakland near Lake Merritt. He's indoor-only and declawed. He lives with a brother-cat, Daddy J. and Daddy B., and a 14-week old Italian Greyhound named Bubbles. (Italian Greyhounds are tiny and cute to begin with, but a 14-week old baby is the *most* adorable thing I've seen all week!) They have an X-pen system set up at their front door, so Bubbles can go outside while it's so very warm, and, two days ago, before they got all the kinks out of it, Patsy managed to figure out how to get through. (Neither he nor his brother cat are very "jumpy-up," so he definitely went through.) They had the brother-cat "demonstrate" how Patsy got out, and he just popped right through an opening in the setup which they didn't even notice!
I scented Loki, and he immediately did a very solid trail around the back of the house, into the neighbor's yard, and through to the next yard. They had already checked the neighbor's garage and basement, but we asked to check again. There was a lot of "stuff" in both the garage and basement, so the dogs couldn't get all the way in; it's entirely possible that he's actually in either of those places and they just didn't get close enough to get any scent. We also checked the next yard--it was tight-packed with tomatoes, corn, and all other sorts of plants! Both dogs seemed very excited at one, particular corner of the back fence, but not so much on the far side of the yard, where there was a tall wall. We continued down the street past this house, but Loki just didn't seem to think that Patsy had been there.
We checked down the street the other direction and got nothing. We checked across the street, and both dogs showed a mild interest at one, particular house, where there are known to be outdoor cats. Loki didn't seem to think that there was Patsy's specific scent, though. We continued around the block to the houses behind Patsy's, and Loki did seem to think that there was scent. At one, point, he flushed "something" out of a bush--I didn't see what it was, so it might have been a mouse or rat...but might also have been a cat. Whatever it was ran into the backyard of a house where nobody was home, so we couldn't go check. (And that, particular house looks like it might be "between tenants" by its run-down state. Daddy J. will be going back later today to see if anybody is there, because we did see some junk and a shed in the backyard, which definitely need to be checked!)
Nobody was home at the next house, either, but the third was a small apartment complex. Loki *definitely* thought that Patsy's scent was there, and when we went to the back he managed to find a hole in the fence to the second yard, and went right on through! There was a shed in the corner, and, since I wasn't about to crawl through a hole in a fence where the owners weren't home, we didn't get a thorough search. We went to the other side of the apartment complex, and Loki seemed to think that the scent ended right there. At that point, we were pretty much behind Patsy's house--so it made sense that there was no scent farther on. He must have stayed pretty much in the one direction.
As I was going over what to do with Daddy J. and Daddy B., Daddy B. got a call from the woman across the street in the house with known cats. She said that she thinks she might have seen Patsy this morning, but she's not sure. She saw a flash of brown, but wasn't able to tell coat type or length or anything else. We all went back there, and I came back out with Loki. Daddy B. had gone into the adjacent backyard, where the woman had seen the flash go. Loki was definitely interested in the yard, and he jumped right into the next yard where Daddy B. had climbed through. He marched right across the yard and I boosted him up a wall so he could look in a crack between a tall wall and a garage. As I was boosting him, Daddy B. said that he saw a cat on the other side of this "pathway," and he thought it was Patsy!
We all went around to the other side of that area (around the corner of the block--this particular corner was all apartments) and did a human-only search of the nearby bushes. (I'd put Loki back in the car.) We didn't find him (or any other cat), so I got out both dogs to see what we came up with. Both dogs were quite interested in all of the bushes as well as the "pathway" between the wall and garage. This was almost like an Escher painting, with stairways on top of garages, under balconies, and little cracks and crevices between fences and walls all over the place. Loki did not get a straight "point A to point B" trail, but he was certainly convinced that "some kitty" had just been all over the place. We did, in fact, find two other cats--one a short-haired tabby, and one a long-haired brownish/blackish one. I asked Daddy B. if the long-haired one could have been who he saw on the other side of the pathway, and he just wasn't sure.
We went back to continue talking about what to do. Now, nothing is ever 100% for sure. There are many, many reasons that we could miss scent, or that I could be misinterpreting the dogs' behavior. But I have to say I'm pretty, darned sure that Patsy has been/still is either in their yard, the two neighbors', or the three back-neighbors' yards. One of the complicating factors is that Patsy has been known to be able to make his way into closed cupboards and boxes, and just hang out silently! So some areas we (as humans) might not even think to look might be perfect for this guy, and if he's inside of a closed cupboard in a garage or basement, it's very unlikely that either dog would get scent. And this particular neighborhood is just packed full of nooks and crannies! It's very possible that he was very nearby someplace we looked, but we just didn't pick him up. It's also possible that he got into someone's house and is hiding inside, without them even knowing he's there! (That's happened before!)
It's also possible that it was Patsy that was seen across the street. Scent is tricky, and I don't know for sure whether or not Loki was on Patsy's scent when I took him through all the yards across the street. Definitely, "some kitty" had just been there--we saw two! What it boils down to, though, is that either he's hunkered down very near their house, within a few yards, or he's wandering across the street. Either way, we've got the area pretty well narrowed down, and I left them with several things to do to work on getting him back. I do have a good feeling that they'll get him, and it might be very soon (as I was sitting there talking, the other cat made a very strange meow-hiss--it's even possible that Patsy was going through his own yard as I was there!), or it might be a week or so. They've got several very nice and helping neighbors, so I'm hoping that it'll be sooner rather than later!
7-8-08 - Update on Nesta - He's Home!!!!
I've got tears (of joy) in my eyes as I write this. Here's an example of how everything just fit together the way it was supposed to. An example of how good advertising, both on the part of the owner and the finder brought Nesta back to his Daddy!
I got a call yesterday afternoon from Daddy--someone had Nesta and they were going to meet in the evening! This was a man who works part-time in Livermore and spends the rest of the time in his RV on the Santa Cruz beach. He said that he looked for the dog's owner for over an hour, and when he didn't find him took him with him to Livermore. He said that Nesta was healthy and eating, but just seemed depressed.
The way that they hooked up was through a radio station that does public service announcements. RV Man called to say he'd found a dog with a striped collar, and two different people listening to the station made the connection between this dog and the one on the flyer Daddy had given them! Yay for the radio station, yay for Daddy for getting the word out, and triple Yay! for the two people who made the connection and called him!
This morning I got the call that they've been happily reunited! Woo Hoo!
7-8-08 - Andy
Andy is a twelve-year old tuxedo cat in San Francisco, near Bernal Heights. Daddy went out of town on the 3rd, and the cat-sitter saw him on the 3rd and 4th. He didn't see him after that, and Daddy came home yesterday. Normally Andy will come running whenever Daddy's car pulls up, and at the very least will show up within an hour or two. The cat-sitter left some food and a treat for him on Sunday night, and that was gone on Monday morning (there's a cat-door) but there's no way to tell if it was Andy who came in and ate it. Daddy said that he has had raccoons in the past, but not recently, and he hasn't had any other cats come through the cat door, so it sure seems like it might have been Andy in some time on Sunday night.
The one complicating factor is that Andy has some serious health issues. He has a heart murmur, for which he takes medication. He also has liver cancer which is very slowly progressing, but for which he also needs medication. Daddy said that he isn't showing any signs of illness, but the vet gave him two to three years...and that was two years ago.
I scented Loki and he immediately took me up the street to the dead-end, up the pedestrian stairway, and into a field where Andy is known to hang out. He took me right up to the house that adjoins the field (no fence), and both dogs got crazy-sure that there was a cat nearby. Anubis was actually knocking at the door, like the cat was *right* on the other side! There wasn't anybody home, nor was there anybody home at the connected house. We checked around as much as we could without blatantly trespassing, but we didn't see any sign of Andy. We did see an orange tabby on the ledge outside of the third floor window!
We continued on, and Loki took me up a very steep pedestrian stairway, to the "second half" of the field. He also indicated that there was a lot of cat-scent right there, and Daddy said that Andy also hangs out in that spot. We didn't find him, though. We continued along the streets, making a circle around the house, and we just didn't find any sign that he'd crossed through any of the streets. This completely fit with what Daddy knows of his territory--he always goes in the direction of the fields, and hasn't been seen in any of the other directions.
Most people weren't home, so we couldn't really do any yard-to-yard work. We checked Daddy's yard, though, and found some fresh kitty-diarrhea. Daddy said that there really aren't too many wandering cats in the neighborhood, so that just increased the chances that Andy is nearby wandering. I'm betting on the theory that he got annoyed that Daddy wasn't home, was spending more time than usual outside, and then got scared by the fireworks while he was in his own yard. That probably scared him away from his yard, and now, even though Daddy is home, he isn't coming back because, as far as he knows, that Loud Scary Noise is still there!
I gave Daddy a list of things to do, including door - to - door on his block and on the block surrounding the fields. Also, to leave food/water in the *front* yard, in case Andy was afraid to come to the back yard. And, finally, he's going to do two feeding stations, one in the bottom field, and one in the top.
I do think this guy is close, and it's just going to be a matter of tracking him down and managing to be in the same place at the same time!
7-7-08 - Dixie
Dixie is a six-year old female cat in Walnut Creek. She and her littermate, Trixie, were adopted as kittens by Mommy and Daddy. They had been found at a vet's office, next to the dumpster, taped up inside of a cardboard box with the mamma-cat. Trixie and Dixie look a lot alike but couldn't have more opposite personalities! Trixie demands to be let outdoors, stays out all night, and is rather aloof toward people. Dixie is indoors by choice--she'll venture outside with Mommy or Daddy, but never goes off of the porch and runs back inside at any noise. She's very timid in general, but is more outgoing with people than Trixie. She will cautiously approach strangers and let them pet her.
About five days ago she got out. Mommy and Daddy's two 21-year old boys are home from college, and they think that somehow one of them left a door open for a while and she went out. They didn't notice until the next morning. Dixie has been left outside overnight in the past, and she's always waiting at the door demanding to be let back in, first thing in the morning. This time she wasn't. Maybe she got bolder and went farther, maybe she got scared by a raccoon or the garbage truck first thing in the morning. This particular area is a "normal neighborhood," but the houses are a bit farther apart than in most neighborhoods, and many houses don't have fences. There's a 10-acre open (undeveloped) park behind the house and a large lot under construction next-door.
I usually do my cat-searches in the evening, when people are getting home from work, in case we need to check yards or garages. Also, in the summer, it's usually cool by early evening, and the dogs just don't work well in the heat. We got there at 5:30, and when I opened the car door it was like walking out of a refrigerator into an oven. I hoped that the half-hour or so it'd take for the interview would cool things down...and I guess it did. Like, from 95 to 90! Mommy and Daddy had a nice little pond in the front yard, so I had Loki go lay down in it before we started, and I got Anubis wet all over--but even that only lasted for a few minutes. We had to go much more slowly than usual in this heat, that's for sure!
I had the dogs check the yard first, because there were a lot of places to hide. Loki seemed a bit interested in a pile of old kayaks and other sports stuff next to the garage, but then Daddy reminded me that they'd put their dog in the garage while we were working. I think that Loki was just getting the dog's scent through the wall of the garage, but I told Daddy that it wouldn't be a bad idea to clear out the pile of stuff to make sure that Dixie wasn't in there. He said he'd make it his project for tomorrow.
I scented Loki, but we had a bit of a complication. They didn't have anything that was 100% only Dixie's scent. They had a cushion on the back of a chair which Dixie would lay on, and they said that they've never seen Trixie on it, but I just couldn't be sure. Also, remember, the two kitties are littermates, so if we're going off of the theory that scent is based on DNA, their scents should be pretty similar!
In any case, he took off down a driveway across the street...which Daddy said was *definitely* Trixie's territory! Loki led me on a trail between houses, around a tiny creek, and then up to a shed with a rabbit in a hutch. Both dogs were excited about finding the rabbit, but Loki continued to insist that "some kitty" regularly went underneath that shed. I tried to get Loki to continue on with the trail, but it seemed that everywhere we turned, he gave me a positive confirmation that we were on scent. I started to get convinced that he was actually scenting Trixie, and that was her territory. We went out to the next street, across that one, and checked an open field. Loki gave me positive confirmation there, too, and at that point I was pretty, darned sure that we were just going with Trixie's scent. It didn't make sense that Dixie would have gone so far and wandered around so very much that her scent was everywhere.
We went back to the house along the road. This isn't "supposed to be" a busy street, but people go pretty fast down here, and Mommy was afraid that Dixie had been hit. We didn't find any indication to think that she had been. Then we went to the open park behind their house. Mommy had also been afraid that Dixie might have gone up there and gotten into problems with a fox or coyote. Not only didn't we find any indication that Dixie had ever been there, we also didn't find any sign of any sort of predator at all. In fact, we found a *lot* of deer poop, places where the deer bedded down, and even a deer watering-hole and deer-lick. So, I think that area could be considered pretty safe.
When we came back down to Mommy's and Daddy's yard from the back, Loki acted like he was on trail again, and took us behind the houses (unfenced yards backing up to this open area), seeming to be on a trail. He got *super* excited about three or four houses down. This yard had tons of junk in it, and there was one, particular shed which Loki just would not leave. I convinced him to leave, and we went a few more houses down. I asked him "Which Way?" and he zoomed right back to that shed. I told Daddy at that point I was reluctant to spend any more time in that yard, because either she wasn't there at all and it was Trixie's scent Loki was excited about, or she was currently under that shed and we couldn't get to her anyway, or she was somewhere else in that pile of junk and I didn't want the dogs to spook her out to somewhere else. Daddy agreed.
The last place we checked was the house next door under construction. Neither dog seemed interested in much, until they both found a pit with a drainage pipe going underground. It was a small pit and a small pipe--no way I could get down to check inside. But both dogs were *convinced* that something was in there. If both dogs are convinced, I'm convinced. I pulled Loki away and asked him "Which Way?" and he kind of meandered back over to the pipe--nothing like the zooming he did at that shed! So, while I think there's "something" in that pipe, I don't think it's Dixie. I told Daddy to come back with some dry food and a big bowl of water, just in case. If the dry food isn't touched or is just nibbled, it's rats or mice. If it's eaten and the bowl of water is filthy, it's a raccoon. If it's eaten and the water is clean, it might be a cat.
We stopped at that point--it was 9:00pm, and was just barely starting to cool off! I told Mommy and Daddy about how to advertise, and then I suggested that they put a live-trap by that shed, with the three-day plan of 1) Food near, trap closed; 2) Trap propped open, food just inside; and 3) Trap set, food all the way in. (And I warned them against leaving the trap set when it's so very hot out!) The last thing we want to do is to have Dixie go part-way in that trap and get scared--she'll never go in again. I also told Mommy and Daddy to leave the back door cracked open at night, in case she's coming back at 2am, trying to figure out how to get in!
I do think that Dixie is healthy and safe, and not too far away from the house. I also think that this might be a long-haul type of thing, where they have to wait days until she either comes back on her own, they trap her, or they sight her and manage to woo her back.
7-5-08 - Nesta
Nesta is a 10-year old male Golden Retriever/Chow in Santa Cruz. He's one of those laid-back dogs who generally goes off leash and hangs out with Daddy wherever he happens to be. Three days ago, Daddy was with a friend at the ocean in Santa Cruz, and they humans went down this little path to a bluff right by the cliff. Nesta had his collar and leash on, but Daddy had let him loose to do what he wanted. Daddy said that he and his friend were on the bluff for about 10 minutes, and they know that Nesta was there for at least part of the time. When they came back up, though, he wasn't around.
Daddy has done a lot of flyering in the area, including standing there and handing flyers to the (large volume of) pedestrians. He's done door - to - door in the surrounding neighborhood. This particular street in Santa Cruz, though, is very much a "no flyer zone," and the city removes them every day. Daddy puts them back up every day, but he and I agree that there's not way, short of getting an actual "posting permit," that Daddy will be able to put up large posters on this street.
I scented Loki at the spot where they had gone down the cliff, and, of course, Loki wanted to go down there, too. After I convinced him that, while he was a Very Good Boy, we needed to look elsewhere, he started taking me east along the sidewalk. When I asked Daddy where he'd parked, he said he'd parked almost exactly in front of where Nesta was last seen.
We got just a few hundred yards, and the scent quality changed and then very shortly stopped. I explained to Daddy that this could mean that Nesta had been picked up at this spot, and the wind continued to blow his scent a little bit farther on. At that point, Daddy remembered that he'd actually parked about a half-mile along the road to the east--the friend had parked right in front of the cliff-path. They'd wondered if Nesta had started to go back to Daddy's car and been picked up by someone. At that point things made sense--Loki *had* been following Nesta's trail from the cliff-path to the east, and at the point where the scent quality changed, he was still on Nesta's trail, but it was the original one *from* the car *to* the cliff-path. And it didn't take Loki very long to decide that the trail was going the wrong way.
We crossed the street and checked the other side, to see if Nesta had crossed there. Nothing. We continued farther down the street, checking both sides at intervals, and still got nothing. When we got near to where Daddy had parked, Loki did seem to want to follow the trail for a bit, and then dead-stopped. Daddy said that he'd parked right there. We went back to the PLS (point last seen), and checked in the other direction. Nothing. We checked into the neighborhood, also nothing.
I told Daddy at that point, that I was farily confident that Nesta had gone back to the east and been picked up at the spot where the scent quality changed. Interestingly enough, there was an unofficial dog-beach right there. It made *so* much sense that he got to the dog-beach, someone saw a dog with a leash but no person, and decided to "rescue" him. We talked about what that person was probably like--I almost felt like an FBI profiler! For one thing, I don't think it's someone who lives in that neighborhood. Daddy has done too good of a job of advertising in that immediate area. It was at 9:30pm on a Wednesday, so it was someone who frequents that place from elsewhere in Santa Cruz or the Bay Area, and who walks their dog after work. It wasn't someone who uses a computer as their primary form of communication--Daddy had done good advertising on Craigslist. (And he was surprised when I told him that most people *don't* use the computer as their primary form of communication, and Craigslist is a great resource but most people *don't* think about checking it for something like a lost/found dog.) So, then we talked about how to go about advertising. We talked about large neon posters around town, what sort of advertising would cover other parts of the Bay Area, etc.
Nesta is out there, and Daddy is darned well determined enough to get him back, that I think there's a very good chance he will!
7-5-08 - Apple
Apple is a 15-year old female cat in Sonoma. Mommy is working on her Masters in Physics at San Jose State. Apple and her two kitty-siblings had grown up with Mommy and Grammy/Grampa, and then about a year ago Mommy brought them down with her to San Jose. Mommy had been on vacation, though, so she'd brought the kitties up to stay with Grammy and Grampa. In San Jose they're all indoor kitties, but in Sonoma they were allowed access to the outside. They didn't generally go far--no more than one or two yards away at most. Apple was the most skittish of all of them and wouldn't generally go outside of the immediate yard.
About six or seven days ago, while Mommy was still out of town, Apple disappeared. This particular neighborhood is semi-rural; Grammy and Grampa's house is part of a tri-plex, surrounded by some houses with yards and fences, some houses with acreage and no fence, and some open fields. Mommy had tried to look for Apple during the few days she'd been back, but there was just so much territory to cover, and the only "natural boundary" was the busy road a block away.
I scented Loki right away, and he wanted to take me into the adjoining tri-plex unit's yard. The people had just moved out of this unit, and the door was wide open. Loki got super-strong scent right in the back area where the fences joined--this was right where Apple would have gone in and out of her own house, and was where an open window was to the vacant unit. We went inside the vacant unit to check, and there was a lot of random junk left there, but no Apple. It's totally possible, though, that she's been going in and out since it's been vacant, looking for a quiet place.
I let Loki continue, and he took me through a little creek just behind the house, out to another block, and up to a big fence that said NO TRESPASSING. There didn't seem to be any way to contact the owners to get permission to go back there, so we had to go around the block at this point and hope that there was some sort of way to access the other side of the property, to see if the trail continued. We went down the block to the Busy Street, and both dogs hit on a spot in the road where something had been killed. I looked closer and saw grey cat-fur. Fortunately, Mommy said that her boyfriend had seen a dead cat there a few days earlier but it wasn't Apple.
We finished going around the block, and fortunately there was access through a church property to the field behind the NO TRESPASSING land. Anubis almost immediately found a black long-haired cat, so it's pretty likely that someone is feeding/watering outdoor cats nearby. Loki did seem to pick up the trail, going through another field, to an area near a fenced yard. He was *very* excited in the blackberry bushes along the fence. We went around to the street and spoke with the woman who owned that yard. She was nice enough to let us have access to her property--it was the strangest yard, because it was 1 acre big but only 60 feet wide. It was long and thin and just kept going and going! She said that she has a cat whom she lets go outside, and she feeds it by her door. She had several water sources in her yard (a pool, a pond, and a fountain), and she said that many cats and deer and whatever else go through her property all the time. Loki was very interested the underneath of one, particular shed--it could be that the woman's cat hangs out under there. Another shed was filled with flies, and I asked the woman if she knew whether or not something had died. She didn't know of anything, and I didn't smell anything, but Loki was going crazy trying to figure out how to access the underneath. (We went back around to the outside later, and Loki managed to stick his nose through the blackberries to the underneath, and he was pretty sure that something was dead under there. I couldn't see.)
After this point, we continued around another block or two to try and find out whether Apple's scent was anywhere else. Loki didn't seem to think so. We went back to the house and I gave Mommy several things to do to try and get Apple back. She's going to put up some big posters, do more door - to - door flyers, etc. I had her put a live-trap in the back yard of the vacant unit, where Apple's scent was so very strong. I gave her instructions on doing a kitty buffet and/or feeding stations, out in the area by the woman's house. The complicating factor here is that Mommy is going to have to go back to San Jose in another day or two, and Grammy/Grampa won't be able to go out and search and do some of the things to get her back.
I have no doubt that Apple is very close to home, but whether or not she'll come back on her own without Mommy there is up in the air. And if there's nobody there to go out and fetch her (which might take a week or more), she might very well end up finding a nice, comfy place with outdoor-cat food and water and decide that's her new home.
7-2-08 - Sam
Sam is a 15-year old, female Terrier mix. She, Mommy, Daddy, and her doggy-sister were up at Huntington Lake, which is a cabin area in the mountains above Fresno. They have been coming up to the cabin every year for the past five or six years. This is one of those areas where there is a cabin every acre or two, with no fences, a lot of dirt roads and small one-car-wide paved roads. There's a general store, restaurant, and sports rental a couple of miles away. Most of the cabins are vacant most of the time.
They had come up on Friday night, and they'd spent Saturday morning down at the lake. Sam was pretty tired after that and slept all afternoon and evening. She's an old girl, mostly blind and mostly deaf. Daddy described some signs of dementia, but Mommy didn't seem to have really noticed it. They said that she wasn't arthritic, but she was definitely slowing down, couldn't jump into the car any more, and a morning at the lake exhausted her for the rest of the day.
Saturday night (June 28) at about 10:30 pm they all took a short walk--Mommy, Daddy, both dogs, and two little nieces. They only got a couple hundred yards from the house when they decided to turn around. They knew that Sam was with them at that point--the nieces remembered seeing her sniffing at some bushes at that point. The nieces ran ahead, and Mommy and Daddy thought Sam was with them. When they got back to the cabin they realized that she hadn't come back from that point. They went right back out with flashlights and searched for about two hours, but she was nowhere to be found.
Next morning, they talked with the people who were in the cabins, and they found out that pretty much immediately after she had gotten lost, she went up onto a porch of a cabin another one- or two-hundred yards down, probably attracted by the very bright light. When the people in that cabin opened the door she ran off. That was the last cabin of the "neighborhood" before the open mountain.
I got out there on Wednesday morning, so she'd been gone about 80 hours. The weather had been warm, but not so bad that a trail would have disappeared by that point. I decided to start out by doing an Area search near the cabin where she was last sighted. We found one pile of coyote poop, but nothing else suspicious. At that point, I scented Loki and he started on the trail from the cabin where she'd been sighted. He took me right up a hill from the cabin, past a water tower, and onto the dirt fire-road. We continued on the dirt road for about a quarter mile and then he took me off the road into a meadow. (This area was really quite beautiful--there were several meadows, all with little creeks going through them, and all surrounded by hills of pine and scrub.)
When we got into the meadow he took me right over to an area under a tree and sniffed around there for a while. It made sense that she got to that point, realized she was off of the road and lost, and decided to sleep until morning. The trail did seem to continue on from there, through the meadow, but it seemed to be a "different quality." Loki's head was up higher, and he was almost air-scenting rather than true trailing. That could mean one of several things--it could mean a fresher trail, a "back-trail" (going the wrong direction), or for whatever reason the way she was "laying scent" changed.
We didn't get too much farther when we realized that we were in a bear's territory. The meadow wasn't even a quarter-mile long, and as soon as we got to the end we found several piles of bear scat (poop). One was Very Very Very Fresh--almost still steaming. Another was pretty fresh, but at least several hours old--maybe overnight. The third was older but still within a couple of days. We didn't find any "evidence" of animal kill in the scat--it all seemed to be grass and vegetation. Daddy mentioned that as he'd been walking along the fire trail two days ago, he heard a grunt-grunt which might have been a bear.
The trail seemed to peter out at that point, and I didn't want to continue on blindly into the known territory of a bear who was *just* there without a darned good reason. Loki was wearing his bell (the one he has now is actually a bear-bell I got on a trip to Alaska!), and we were making plenty of noise, but there wasn't any reason to push our luck. We did a fairly extensive Area search of the region around which we found the bear scat. We also checked for side-trails we might have missed. We didn't come up with anything else at all. We also did an extensive Area search of the meadow and surrounding hills. Again, nothing.
We got back to the cabin area, and I put Loki back on-leash so that he knew that I was asking him to find Sam's specific scent (instead of "any animal or interesting thing, which is what off-leash means). We were along the fire-road in the section we think she didn't walk, and when he got to the path between the PLS (point last seen) and the cabin, he almost did a complete U-turn to swing me back up to the cabin. That confirmed pretty well in my mind that he was still working her scent, and that he would have alerted me to any other side-trails we might have missed. We worked the trail back up to the cabin, and I let him off-leash again to do more Area work of the surrounding meadow and field. Again, nothing.
We went back to Mommy and Daddy's cabin and took a little break, and then we checked the other direction--where they hadn't walked with her. We didn't get any indication that she'd been there. We finished up by doing detail checks of a dozen or so cabins surrounding Mommy's and Daddy's.
I don't want to draw any conclusions at this point. The good news is that we didn't find her injured and laying nearby. Yes, it was hot, so our POD (probability of detection) was lower than it might have been, but we searched the high probability areas pretty closely and well. We didn't find any direct evidence that she'd been killed--no remains, and the dogs didn't alert on any particular spot where something might have been eaten. However, we didn't do a very thorough search very far into the bear's territory.
What Mommy and Daddy need to hold onto at this point is that it *was* hot while we were searching, and if she backtracked and made her way in a different direction, all it would have taken was being five feet in the wrong direction to miss that offshoot. Several neighbors told stories of dogs which had been picked up by tourists, and Mommy and Daddy need to hold onto the possibility that she made her way into a different part of the "neighborhood," and was picked up by someone who was leaving and didn't want to take the time to find out where she belonged. The July 4th weekend is coming up, and I gave Mommy and Daddy instructions on how to best advertise (posters, door-to-door in certain areas, flyers at all of the stores), and we will have to hope that, if someone did pick her up, they'll be back for this weekend and see the signs.
June 2008
6-30-08 - Update on Abbey - She's Home!!!!
Abbey, the six-year old, puppy-mill bitch, Italian Greyhound from Castro Valley is home! I have to say, there are cases I never expect to hear results on, and this was one of them. I was pretty sure that it was going to stay a mystery.
Abbey was found TEN miles away, in Union City. She had 300 ticks on her, had lost 1/3 of her body weight, had imbedded foxtails, and had a laceration which was well infected, but this tiny, thin-skinned little girl survived TEN miles of openspace, sweltering heat, coyotes, owls, hawks, and cars! She's been gone five weeks, so she's averaged two miles a week. I still think she was fairly close to home when I got out there with Loki, and she probably went very short distances each day, looking for food and water, and just kept going.
She ended up in the backyard of a couple who managed to confine her, remembered seeing the flyer at the vet, and then called Mommy. THANK YOU to the people who found her, for realizing that she wasn't neglected, abandoned,mistreated, or unloved. THANK YOU for realizing that her Mommy has been heartbroken for the past five weeks, and THANK YOU for reuniting her with her family!
6-29-08 - Update on Bartholomew - He's Home!!!!
Mommy had called me the day after the search, to let me know that Bartholomew had not been on the camera. It was a neighbor's cat coming to eat the food. That was good information, and I wanted her to leave the camera in place for another 24 hours before she moved it. The next day, I got a call from Daddy, who said that the people on the next block called him because there was a cat stuck in a tree, and all of the neighbors had accounted for their own cats. Nobody could find the cat in the tree--but lots of people heard it! I had him move the camera to the bottom of that tree, in case whatever cat it was came down. Turns out, it wasn't Bartholomew.
So, when Mommy emailed me today, it was wonderful news to find out that she had him home! A week ago, she got another call from the same woman at the apartment complex, who saw him earlier. Mommy went out there, but she didn't find him. She's been spending more time in that area, though, and, wouldn't you know, today he was there! He was apparently hanging out with an orange cat, and Mommy couldn't get the orange cat to see if it belonged to anybody.
I wish we could read their minds. (That's not the first time I've said that, and it won't be the last.) The sightings at that apartment were weeks apart, and we got no scent there. We got good scent in the other direction, near the house. Was he just roaming around the whole time, or was he in one spot, and then another spot? How many times had he been at that apartment, and for how many days? I just wish we knew...
6-29-08 - Cosmo
Cosmo is a four-year old black cat in Larkspur. She's outdoor-access, but she generally doesn't stay out very long, and never at night. Three days ago, Mommy went to let her out, and then when she came back in didn't realize that the door was still ajar. Within 30 minutes, she realized she was gone. Generally she'll come when Mommy calls, but this time she didn't.
The first thing I noticed, as I was driving to the house, was that there were flyers for three different lost cats up on this street. All three were fairly recent. That wasn't a good sign. Mommy's house backs up to a creek--right now there's just a partial trickle, but it runs full in the winter. Directly above the creek (about 15 feet up the bank) is a nicely packed dirt walking-trail. Up from that was nothing but open-space, with trees and shrubs.
I scented Loki, and he took me about three houses down, in the direction she was known to go. He took me across the street into a little "alley street," but seemed a bit confused. I took him into the creek, and he just seemed to want to keep going, with super-fresh scent. I stopped him after about a quarter mile, because it just didn't make sense. In the past, he's been known to trail wild animals who have *just* been through, and I think that's what he was doing. We went up onto the walking-trail at that point, and he didn't seem to have any scent.
In the creek and on the walking trail, we'd been looking for evidence of coyote. I knew that they had to be around, but we just didn't find any scat or other evidence. Generally they'll defecate on the wide-open trails like that, to mark their territory, but they didn't here. Strangely enough, Mommy said that she'd talked to several neighbors who said "There are coyotes around here," but who had never seen or heard them. We checked a couple of drainages and field-type areas, where they'd probably hang out, but we still didn't see anything. We got back to the spot across the creek from Mommy's house, and we continued on, getting to a switch-back part of the trail. Half-way up, the dogs alerted on a spot where something had been killed, and I found tufts of grey fur. Cosmo is black, but one of the kitties on the flyers was grey. That was the only evidence of predators we found. One serious possibility is that there's an active Mountain Lion in the area. They *don't* leave scat on the roadways, and they don't generally leave evidence of their kills. When there's an active lion, there generally aren't as many coyotes.
We went back to the house and started a door-to-door. The immediate neighbor said that he has seen Cosmo around, but not in a week. He also said that he's seen a grey cat with a collar around. When we got to the house after that, we found a spot leading into the crawlspace...with grey fur caught on it. Loki was *sure* there was a cat in that crawlspace, and then both of the dogs started indicating that the cat was up against the wall on the side of the house. I let Loki into the crawlspace (it was uneven and I couldn't so much as get my head in to look, but Squirmy Boy went right in). We immediately got a HISS and BARK BARK, and so I called Loki back to me. We got Mommy to come out and sit at that spot while we continued to check a few more houses (across in the alley-type street). We didn't find anything else, so we decided it was time to talk to Mommy.
I showed her the grey fur, and it definitely wasn't Cosmo's. We talked about whether or not it was Cosmo in that crawlspace, and I gave it a 50/50 chance. yes, there was grey fur caught on the entrance, but that didn't mean that Cosmo didn't also go in there, or wasn't in there now. We talked about how to determine which cat is in there, and I explained that the most definitive answer would be from a motion-sensor camera set out there 24/7, with food and water just outside. Mommy didn't want to do the camera, though, so I did convince her to try a trap. The problem with the trap was, though, that she'd probably catch at least one raccoon, and even if it *is* Cosmo in the crawlspace, it didn't mean that she'd come out and go right into the trap. Eventually she probably will, but meanwhile we're never going to be sure whether or not it was/is her in that crawlspace.
Mommy just didn't (want to?) understand why, if she was that close, wouldn't she come home? And if she'd come out of the crawlspace to go into the trap, why wouldn't she just go another two houses and come home? I tried to explain how there were so many factors involved--if she's scared or injured, she might be tempted to go five feet (into the trap) but not 150 feet (to get home). Or that if she had been scared at the house, she might be totally avoiding it--because, in a cat's mind, when something scary happens at one spot, that spot *always* contains that scary thing. The cat won't cross back through that scary spot, even though Safe Home Base is just on the other side. And a scared or injured cat wouldn't come to the owner's voice, no matter how bonded they were while things were "normal." Cats brains just aren't logical. They don't react like a person would, or even like a dog would. When they're in "fight or flight," they become prey animals (like a rabbit or mouse) and react in a totally defensive, self-protective way. All bets are off in this situation, and too many people almost become offended that their cat (who is normally a lap-cat, purr-ball) is suddenly a wild animal, with wild instincts.
After we left, I called the flyer with the grey cat and explained what we'd found. It turned out that the grey fur was directly behind the house where the cat was lost. I hate having to break news like that to people. No, it's not ultimate proof that it was *her* grey cat which had been killed, but none of us are kidding ourselves. Interestingly enough, this woman said that she *had* talked to people who had actually seen and heard coyotes in the neighborhood.
I'm crossing my fingers for Cosmo. I still think there's a 50/50 chance it's her in the crawlspace--there's definitely *some* cat in there. I just hope that the trap tells the story, and that whichever cat was in the crawlspace ends up to be the one that goes into the trap.
6-28-08 - Bijou
Bijou is a four-year old, black, female cat in Daly City. Mommy and Daddy are in the process of moving from Sacramento, and Bijou had literally been in the new place for 24 hours, when, two days ago, she escaped through the garage door. Mommy and Daddy have been doing all the right things so far--they've left the garage door open with food and litter inside, they've left their clothes out in the back yard, and they've been going out at night.
We got a trail leading about four houses down in one direction, and then Loki took me straight up to someone's gate. (This house was number 41--that's important in a minute.) If we were to go through the yards that direction, we'd get to a busy street, and then across to a very large high-school. When we went back to the house and tried to see if there was scent in the other direction, Loki took me around the corner and then across the street to the high-school. I asked Daddy if he'd been walking there, and he had, so at that point I couldn't say that Loki was truly on Bijou's scent. It was also very possible that he was on her "residual scent" that was on Daddy's clothes as he'd walked. However, we got pretty quickly to a point where Daddy had gone one way, and the scent trail went another. We followed the trail along the bushes at the edge of the school, turned a 90 degree corner (we hit a fence and rather than going through, the trail turned), and along to the end of the field. At that point it was hard to say which direction to go, and after we checked all of them, it seemed like she hadn't gone any farther than that.
We went back into the high-school, to an area near some dumpsters where Daddy had seen two other cats. There was cat food out there, and it would have been a perfect place for her, but Loki didn't seem to find her scent there. Both dogs were scarfing up all the food they could find, though! (Well, all that they could eat before I told them Ack!) We went back to the street between the school and Daddy's house, and Loki got scent up to a pink house, and took me up to that fence. I remarked to Daddy that when we went back to his side, we had to see if the pink house was directly behind number 41...and, guess what, it was! If Bijou had gotten to number 41, went into the back yard, crossed to the yard of the pink house, and then crossed the busy street, she would have been directly in the bushes where Loki had followed the trail through the school!
To be on the safe side, though, we went to number 41 and knocked on doors back to Daddy's house. We got into about half of the yards and were able to see into all but one of the others. That one definitely had at least one cat in it. From both sides, both dogs wanted to get over to "Find Felix!" The yard was covered with blackberry bushes, though, and the people weren't home. When we were in the downwind yard, I saw a grey kitten in the bushes. Right then, Loki went nuts and actually jumped up onto the fence! Now, the fence here was about four feet high, and a standard 2x4 with fence-boards type. Loki jumped up *onto* the 2x4 cross-beam, realized he couldn't jump into the next yard because of the blackberries, and then balanced there like a circus-dog for about 10 seconds. He actually *turned around* on that 2x4! I've seen cats running along fences, but never a 50 lb Border Collie!
We decided at that point that we just weren't going to come across her today. We went back and talked about the things Daddy needs to do. The primary thing is that he needs to work on getting her a bit farther away from home than he has been. There's absolutely nothing at all tying her to that house, and the few other similar cases I've had recently have involved cats who seem to have been moving around--Bartholomew, Beezie, and two others which never even made it to the "search point" (the owners got the cats back before I got out there). Right now, right this minute, I think that Bijou is hanging out in the high school, but I think there's a good chance she's going to move somewhere else as soon as she gets a little bit hungrier. Daddy and Mommy need to get her now, while we have an idea where she is. If not, it's going to be a long haul chasing her from one part of the neighborhood to the other--but Bartholomew is home, so a determined owner does stand a chance of outwitting a determined kitty!
6-27-08 - Spiketta
Spiketta is an 11 month old female, indoor-only Bengal cat in Fairfield. Three nights ago, she was in the garage when Daddy came home on his Harley, opened up the garage door, and she ran out. I asked Mommy whether this was the first time she got out, and, after thinking a while, she realized that she actually has been out more times than she realized. She got out two other times but was home by that same evening. She got out three weeks ago, while she was in heat, and is now possibly pregnant. Then, she got out again about a week ago, and was out for the weekend.
Mommy said that she's had four cats disappear in this neighborhood in the past few years. The neighbors said the same thing--outdoor cats just seem to disappear around there. (And we think we know where they've gone--more on that later.)
First thing we did was run a trail. It went to the near corner and then turned to the block behind their house. There were some thick bushes there, and we checked them pretty carefully. The trail stopped, so we went back to the corner and checked the other direction. There did seem to be a trail leading up that street--a moderately busy street--to a very busy street. The trail "ghosted" across that street, but once we crossed we didn't seem to find any evidence that she'd been over there. We went back to the near side of the busy street and checked around. Loki didn't find any scent leading away, but the dogs did indicate a spot where something dead had been on the sidewalk fairly recently. There was no way to tell what it was, though--and, while it certainly could have been Spiketta, it much more likely was a squirrel or raccoon.
We went back to the house and checked in the other direction, and around the block, but didn't find any further scent. At that point, we started door-to-door checks. Most everybody was home, and we didn't find her in any yard or garage. One (elderly) woman had a live-trap in her backyard, and she said that she used it to catch opossums in her garden. She let Mommy borrow the trap--how awesome! When we got around the corner--to the spot where the scent vanished, we talked with a neighbor who gave us a significant lead on what might have happened to Spiketta.
I have to say that I'm very, very angry about what this woman said. She said that she thinks she saw Spiketta a week ago (which would have been the previous time she got out). She said that she called her friend, who runs Solano County Friends of Animals. She said that her friend "traps all the strays around here." She said that her friend "has 45 cats at her house right now." I asked this woman if it occurred to her or her friend, that most of the cats she was trapping probably belong to somebody?! She said, "No, she only catches strays." I asked if this friend puts up Found signs where she trapped the cat? Of course not! I asked if she put Found flyers at the shelter? Of course not! So, instead of getting ready-for-euthanasia cats from the shelter and truly saving lives, this "rescue group" woman traps peoples' pets and hoards them! This entire neighborhood has the knowledge that "outdoor cats don't last long here," and it's all because this woman is coming over and stealing them! Of course, her answer would be, "Well, people shouldn't let their cats wander outside." With that logic, I may as well go around the neighborhood checking for cars which have their doors unlocked and stealing the radios, because "People shouldn't leave their car doors unlocked." These are PETS which BELONG TO people, and deliberately trapping them and KEEPING THEM without even making a faint effort to find out to whom they belong is THEFT, let me repeat myself, THEFT!!!!! True TNR (trap, neuter, return) people know that the "R" is the key part--you get animals neutered and RETURN THEM where you found them! Not keep them!!!
I'm not going to raise a fuss yet (other than in this blog), because, if she does have Spiketta, I want Mommy and Daddy to have a chance of getting her back. However, conveniently enough, I happened to have a reporter for the Vallejo Times Herald with me, and suddenly this "Donna and her dogs" article is turning into something quite different...
6-25-08 - MAR Tech class
It was a great class and an awesome group of people. We got in several very good dog-training sessions, and we still managed to squeeze in all of the lecture material.
I'm going to introduce Jackie and her Corgie Collie (Border Corgie?) Dino. She's in Haward, and she'll be joining me very, very soon! She'll be coming along on searches, and after she feels comfortable with the knowledge and equipment, she'll be able to go out to the cases where having the dogs along won't make a difference, but where having someone with professional knowledge *will* make a difference. Then, after Dino is trained, she'll be able to take some of my work-load--and I'll be able to advertise! I would *love* to make these services available to everybody who has lost a pet, but there's just one of me! Soon, though, there will be two of us!
6-23-08 - Update on Bella
Well, the little Houdini escaped us again. It seems like we get *this* close to her, and then she just up and disappears. This has happened so many times, it's unbelievable. There was no sign of her on any of the cameras, which had been out for 48 hours. There was a rat, an opossum, a hawk (after the rat?), a couple of people, and even a raccoon, but no Bella. We didn't have any food out at any of the camera stations, because the last time we did that, the foxes moved in, kitchen-sink and all. I told Mommy that we might want to leave the cameras where they are and put food out for another few days; since she hadn't been back, even if we got foxes it wouldn't be like we were scaring her off. But, since this was the last place we know she was, we need to try to lure her back.
6-20-08 - Update on Bella
I'm in San Jose for the next six days, student-teaching the MAR Tech course. After the end of the six days, I'll be approved to teach the class on my own! Woo-Hoo!.
Since I was going to be in the area, Mommy asked me if I'd come out and check two places where there have been possible recent sightings. One was just south of where she's been known to be, in an area of office buildings (still right on the creek). There had been two possible sightings in the last week. The second area was back into territory where she's been before, but well into the neighborhood and away from the creek.
I couldn't come up with anything solid at the commercial area--Loki was super-excited, in all directions at once. I had to say that either she's been all over there, everywhere, very recently, or that he was just going after ground-squirrels and there was no Bella-scent at all. At the second area, in the neighborhood, though, we got no scent at all.
After that, I went to join the class at dog training, and then we all went back to the San Jose City Shelter, where we were using the classroom. The plan had been to get settled, get the crates set up, and then leave the dogs in the air-conditioning while we went to lunch. Literally, as we were all leaving the room to go to lunch, I got a call from Mommy--one of her volunteers had had a 100% sighting of Bella at the creek by the industrial area, and was still looking at her!!!! I told Mommy that she'd have 10 people there within a few minutes, and to have the volunteer try to keep her in sight.
We all got there within 10 minutes, but she was gone. The volunteer had seen Bella, Bella had seen her, and then she slowly walked away down the creek. The volunteer stayed close as long as she could, but then she went around several bushes and lost sight of her. I brought out the dogs, the class took out all of my "catch gear," and we beat that brush back and forth. She just wasn't there any more.
Daddy and one of the people from the class are going to gather up all of the motion-sensor cameras (there are five left, one got stolen) and put them along the creek in that area tonight. Then, we're going to not disturb the area any further until Monday (two days) and then check to see if she's on the camera.
6-18-08 - Sander
Sander is an 18 year-old male grey tabby cat in San Francisco. He doesn't have any health problems, and he's still pretty spry, according to Daddy R. However, he's declawed and only has 1 - 2 teeth. This is another case of the owners going on vacation and the cat disappearing. Daddy R. and Daddy D. went on vacation from Friday to Monday, and on Sunday night the cat-sitter accidentally left Sander outside overnight. Monday morning, when they came back, he wasn't around any more. Their back fence (which is where the cat-door leads) is fairly tall, and Daddy R. had cat-proofed the areas where he'd gotten out in the past. He hadn't gotten out in a very long time. There was one spot where he could have squeezed through the gate to the front sidewalk, so we're thinking that must be where he went.
The first thing I did was check their backyard and garage, and then the immediate neighbors' yards and garages on both sides. We didn't come up with anything at all. Next, I scented Loki, and he took me down the street to the east, up around the corner, and into an alley between the houses. The alley quickly turned into a funky little ungroomed trail, and then dead-ended in someone's yard. Loki was giving me indication all along that way that there was fairly fresh scent.
Daddy R. wanted to go check an area where he'd had two people say that they saw him on Sunday night. We just didn't pick anything up. That doesn't mean that he wasn't there on Sunday night--by now, it's been six days since Sunday, and there just wouldn't be any scent left after that length of time, in the middle of concrete-and-asphalt San Francisco, with the heat we've been having. I tried to convince Daddy R. that even if he was there on Sunday, it seemed pretty likely that he'd come back to his own block--probably right by his own front gate--and couldn't figure out how to get back in.
We checked the yards and garages up to the corner on the west, and about six houses down on the east. Miraculously enough everybody was home! At the yard three down from Sander's, Loki went nuts--I really think that Sander had been there very recently, if not very, *very* recently!
We finished checking the yards, and I felt pretty comfortable that he wasn't injured or hiding anywhere. I had told Daddy R. in the beginning, that if he was still healthy and able to move, we wouldn't come up to him with the dogs--cats just don't let the dogs walk up to them. Daddy R. seemed pretty sure that we'd find him, though, and it was a big disappointment when we didn't. I tried to go over the list of things he needs to do now--everything from posters and more door-to-door flyers, to a live trap, feeding stations, a motion-sensor camera, etc. He didn't seem to want to hear me, though. Some people get that way--it's a pre-emptory way of dealing with grief--it's easier to say "I'll never see him again," than it is to keep up with the struggle for the weeks that it might take.
I just hope that Daddy does at least some of the things on the list. Yes, it's possible that Sander will just come back on his own, but it's much more likely that it's going to take some active effort on their parts. I hope that they are up to making the effort.
6-17-08 - Bartholomew
Bartholomew is a three-year old male, indoor-only, tuxedo cat in Berkeley. Mommy is a Russian scholar working at UCB, and she was back in Russia for three weeks, when Daddy was getting ready to leave to join her for two weeks. Literally, as he was getting his stuff together, Bartholomew escaped out the door. This is *so* common--the kitty whose person has been gone for a week or two, and who decides to make a break for it. I don't know if they're looking for their person, or if they have just decided that it isn't "home" any more, but I can't tell you how many people I've talked to where this exact thing has happened. In fact, this happened with Bartholomew once before--Mommy had been gone for several days and he disappeared. (He was an outdoor cat then, at the old house.) He came back five days after Mommy returned.
What complicates this case is two things. First of all, Mommy just moved into this house a few months earlier, and he was an outdoor cat at the old place. I've had two confirmed cases in the last six months of a situation like this, where the cat was found two months later and three miles away at the old place. So, walking into the situation, I had to take that possibility pretty seriously. The second complication was the timeline. He got lost on May 24th, so we're well past three weeks by now.
I told Mommy before I came out that the one thing I'd be able to do is to tell her whether or not he's been nearby in the past few days. She said that she had a likely sighting several blocks away, at an apartment complex, so I told her that we'd for sure check that area out, too. I fully expected that we'd either get no scent at all (like, if he's on his way back to the old place), or that we'd get scent at the apartment. As often happens, I was very surprised.
I scented Loki at the house, and he *immediately* took me across the street and up two blocks, to a busy street. He crossed the street, but, as often happens, there was no scent on the other side. The scent seems to get blown across the busy streets, so he "ghost trails" across, but then it turns out that the animal didn't actually cross. We came back to the near side, and worked all corners, up and down the blocks, until we set a pretty solid perimeter of about 4 - 6 blocks. It truly seems like Bartholomew isn't all that far from home!
We did go to check the apartment complex, but Loki just didn't seem to get any scent there or in the park across the street. The sighthing had seemed pretty valid, but it was also a week or more ago, and I just don't think he's been there in the last few days. This is another very common thing--the cat who is "displaced" and doesn't stay in one spot, but spends a few days here, then another few days a block over... When we got back to the house, Loki immediately took me across the street, in the same exact place he did the first time. I'd call that a pretty good indication that there was some very strong scent in that spot.
There wasn't a whole lot more I could do for Mommy at that point. There was no way we'd be able to do a door-to-door search of four to six whole blocks, and, in any case, I didn't get the feeling that he was trapped or injured. There was too much fresh scent, in too many places--this guy is out wandering. I left her with a trap and a motion-sensor camera. There was a very good possibility he'd been back to his own yard, and I wanted Mommy to put out food and let the camera figure out who has been coming to eat it. If it isn't him, and we don't get a picture of him over 48 hours, I'll have them move the camera to somewhere else within the four block range.
I do think he's nearby, and now it's just going to be a matter of figuring out his habit and getting him!
6-14-08 - Update on Rufus - He's Home!!!!
Well, he wasn't waiting first thing in the morning, but I got a call late tonight from Mommy. She was watching TV, and she thought she heard a strange noise. It sounded like a meow, but the animal on the TV was a dog! She went out back, and Rufus was there waiting to be let back in!
The interesting thing is that his "cat door" was still perfectly wide open. It was almost like he forgot how to use it! Cats are strange, and their brains aren't that big... My guess is that, on Wednesday, he might have been climbing out (or getting ready to climb back in) through his "door" when he was scared by something. When a cat gets scared, for some reason it won't go back through the "scary spot" until it's shown that it's OK. As far as the cat is concerned, if a dog barks at it, the dog is *always* in that same spot, forever and ever, until proven otherwise. So, maybe he thought that the "cat door" was what barked at him (or whatever) and wouldn't come back through.
I guess we'll just never know what *actually* goes through their minds...
6-13-08 - Rufus
Rufus is a 1.5-year old male cat in Oakland. He and his sister-cat are outdoor-access, but tend to spend most of the time indoors. They have a cat-door of sorts--there's free access to the basement, which has an open vent-screen where they go in and out. They're easily able to jump over the backyard fence. The sister-cat tends to be indoors a little more than Rufus, but neither one goes out for more than a couple hours at a time. Two days ago, in the morning (5:30a), Rufus went out and didn't come back in.
Mommy's neighborhood is mostly duplexes or four-plexes, with unfenced, undeveloped yards and garages which are used for storage. Many of the buildings have basement areas of sorts, either used for storage or for laundry. Mommy said that Rufus came in about a week ago with tar on his feet--and, sure enough, just across the street is a larger apartment building which is having re-siding and/or other sorts of work done to it. While Mommy was canvassing the neighborhood, she learned that Rufus generally tends to go to the end of the street to the east, which is farther than she thought he went.
We started out trying to set a perimeter--because he's an outdoor-access cat, we wouldn't be able to trail him from Point A to Point B. We got scent, sure enough, down the street to the east, and then back to the south, around the block, back to Mommy's house. We didn't get anything any farther south, but when we crossed the street, we got a little bit to the NW. Then, we checked the buildings almost directly across the street from Mommy, and Loki just about went nuts! He was scootle-butting here and there, *sure* that Rufus had just been there. Now, generally it's difficulty to tell whether he's super-excited about "a" cat which has just been there, vs "the" cat we're looking for, when the scent is that fresh, but in this case he pulled me right along the scent-trail he was following, into this particular area, and *then* became super excited. So, my gut truly says that it was Rufus' scent he was hot on. We continued along, through the backyards, and when we got about four more houses down, he didn't seem quite as excited. However, at that point we managed to flush out a grey cat and a white one, so there was plenty of fresh scent for him to be goofy over. The fact that his behavior changed, though, was another indication that it was Rufus' scent earlier.
Since we'd pretty much started a yard-to-yard search already, I decided to continue, and we made it about 8 - 10 houses down the street, then checked across the street on Mommy's side for several buildings. We went over the other way and checked the apartment with construction. We talked to quite a few people who'd seen Rufus around earlier in the week, but nobody who'd seen him in the last two days.
I gave Mommy a list of things to do, including feeding stations, live traps, door - to - door work, and huge posters (she'd already made a bunch up and posted a couple!). My gut feeling on this one is that he's out joyriding, slightly out of his normal territory. I told Mommy that, given past experiences, sometimes just taking the dogs through, and then taking the owner through, will flush the kitty out and, if he's close to home, they'll show up very soon. I gave it a 50/50 that he'd be home on his own before tomorrow.
Mommy said that she felt a lot better, even though we hadn't found him. Just a year ago she went through the same sort of thing without such a good result. That was a different sort of situation, though--that was an elderly cat with kidney failure. When he got out, they had an "idea" where he was, but couldn't get him. He was sighted a couple of times, and Mommy put out live-traps. She put out some of her clothes into a crawlspace where he might have been, and, unfortunately, he was found dead (after four weeks) right next to the clothes. I reassured her that this is a totally different type of case, and that I really did think that Rufus would make his way back home, probably within the week.
6-12-08 - Update on Abbie - She's Home!!!!
I got a call from Mommy this morning--they got Abbie back! She got a call at midnight that someone found her, tied up to a building near where she went lost! (What the person was doing in the parking lot area in the middle of the night, I don't know, but in this case I'm not going to ask a lot of questions...) She still had her collar with name/phone number on.
Seems like the heavy advertising with the posters, and maybe even the presence of a couple of "official" search dogs, made whoever was deciding to keep her change their mind!
What a great (and strange...) ending to a strange case!
6-11-08 - Abbie
This is one of the more interesting cases I've had. Abbie is a 1.5-year old female Black Lab mix. (Her mother was at least part Rhodesian Ridgeback.) She weighs about 70 lbs, and her head is a little bit more square and bulky than the standard lab. She has a lab personality--good with people, dogs, and cats.
Mommy and Daddy live near Watsonville, and Mommy had Abbie at a bagel shop, tied to a (fairly heavy!) wrought iron table while Mommy went in to get some coffee. She hadn't more than stepped foot in the door when Abbie got spooked by something and took off. Mommy isn't sure what happened, and she thinks she might have gotten stung by a bee. She dragged the table behind her, across the parking lot, caused damage to a couple of cars, looped around, and then crossed the *super* busy street. While Mommy was following her, Mommy almost got hit, so she lost sight of her and then couldn't find her. The table had come apart, so the top had been left behind and Abbie was dragging the leg-support section. It's not a small piece of metal, and it's not light, even without the top part. But there were *no* signs of drag marks--no scrapes in the asphalt, concrete, or even in the soft dirt we knew for a fact she crossed. It's possible that she lost the leg section fairly quickly--the leash was looped through, and it could have come off--but it's not like someone could have just tossed it into a trash-can. It would have been visible, or it would have been thrown into a dumpster, and there was just no sign of it! That's going to remain a nagging mystery, I think.
Abbie got lost 3 days ago, and it's been *hot*. Even through the areas that we knew for a fact she'd run, the scent trail was very faint. Loki did get a continuing trail from where Mommy lost sight of her, but as faint as it was, I just couldn't be sure that he was trailing Abbie, as opposed to Mommy who had walked through that entire area at least once. The trail we "got" was about two miles long and looped around almost back to the starting point. It stayed on trails and roads, which corresponded to Daddy's answer to my question--Abbie doesn't do a lot of off-road hiking. She's a trail-dog. Still, though, there were no drag-marks.
The good thing is, even though I wasn't completely sure that we were actually following Abbie's trail, there were no hints that she might have veered off into the adjacent slough or any other place she might have gotten trapped. The trail ended in a little grassy lawn next to some businesses, right up against the super-busy street. There was a spot along the edge, into the "weedy part" which had clearly been trampled down and used as a big-animal bed very recently--certainly within the last 1 - 5 days.
The trail "sort of" went across the busy street here, into a huge, empty field, but there wasn't any clear direction, and there weren't any trails leading out. My gut about this is that it was wind, pushing scent into this field and trapping it there. I just didn't have a strong feeling that Abbie had actually been in that field.
So, after all of that, the answer is "She was probably picked up on the busy street, pretty much where she went out of sight." Mommy and Daddy had already put up some of the HUGE neon posters, and I helped Daddy modify them slightly, structurally, so that they were flat and easier to read, and we moved them to poles closer to where the cars would see them.
Interestingly, just after I left (about 15 minutes), Daddy got a phone call that someone had seen one of the posters and she thought that she just saw a girl walking Abbie very near to where she was lost! I debated going back to try and scent-verify, but by then, it was truly hot out, and I just didn't know if Loki would give me an honest answer. Certainly toward the end of the search, when it was already over 80 degrees, Loki was really dragging and didn't seem to want to keep on working. I decided against going back, and told Daddy that, if it was her, then stepping up on the advertising *immediately* to put pressure on whoever has her was the way to go. He agreed.
6-10-08 - Update on Stevie - She's Home!!!!
This morning I checked on Craigslist, and right there, bold as brass, was an ad from someone who had found a RR female, just had puppies, right at the street in front of Mommy's house! There was no phone number, so I emailed and gave Mommy's number. I called Mommy right away to tell her! By 5p I hadn't heard anything, so I called Mommy back to check in. She'd talked to the person who picked Stevie up, and the husband was going to bring her by after work. I guess it wasn't too high of a priority for this couple, to get Stevie back to Mommy, because it wasn't until almost 11pm that I heard that Stevie was home!
6-9-08 - Stevie
Stevie is a five-year old female Rhodesian Ridgeback in Brentwood. Mommy has 10 other RRs and an "other" dog. She is a responsible breeder, and has retired a couple of her females from breeding due to health problems. All the dog have house access, and all are friendly and well mannered. Stevie has several titles and is a breeding bitch. She had puppies 15 weeks ago, and I got to see one of them. He's a very lovely, friendly *big* little guy!
Mommy lives in farmland, and her house is on some alfalfa acreage. She'll often take a group of the dogs on off-leash walks, and Stevie is very good with the recall. She will also often let a group of the dogs out front (untethered) to hang out, while she's not right there with them. Generally, they stay close, unless they're chasing something, in which case they'll go as far as the animal does. Usually they come back, but a few weeks ago Stevie got picked up by a neighbor about a half-mile away. (Mommy doesn't keep collars on the dogs, so she had to wait until the neighbor saw the flyers she put up before she got her back.) Yesterday morning, Mommy let them out again, and Stevie disappeared.
Mommy's house isn't right up against the street, but it's no more than a couple hundred yards away. For a RR, it may as well be right up against it. It's a fairly well traveled street, and people go pretty quickly.
We were working at several serious disadvantages here. First, was the fact that Stevie's scent was all over the place--just like an outdoor cat's would be. Second, there were 11 other dogs around. Mommy had Stevie's food bowl, which I used to scent Loki. She couldn't guarantee that none of the other dogs had licked it or eaten out of it. What we would be able to do, at best, would be to set a perimeter of where "one of the dogs, probably Stevie" had been. If we got a trail leading well away into a strange direction, we might be able to assume it was Stevie.
Loki followed a scent trail up the driveway, to the main street. There were RR footprints in some mud--which may or may not have been hers. The scent went across this street, but didn't really go any farther than that. Mommy said that it'd be strange for any of the dogs to go up to the street, but I reminded her that she'd said that if they're chasing something they'll keep following it. We walked along the main street, around the corner of the next street (about 1/2 mile away), and to the neighbor's house where she was picked up a couple of weeks ago. We didn't get any scent at all that whole way, which was good--at least we could set one "negative" line. We walked back along a dirt road toward Mommy's, and we didn't get any scent until we got to the area where she "normally" takes the dogs for walks. We got scent pretty much only as far as she normally goes with them, then across the field where they run, and to the road leading back to the house.
It seems pretty likely to me that Stevie ran up to the street after a rabbit or something, and got picked up there. It was on a Sunday morning, fairly early, so the "go to church" crowd is a definite possibility. Mommy said that she doesn't think the farm-workers come out that early on Sunday, so that's something to rule out. While it's a fairly busy street, it's not a highway, and people who drive down it generally have some business nearby--either they live or work nearby. Mommy said that she didn't understand why someone who picks up a dog won't knock on the doors of the houses there to see if the dogs lives in one of them. I tried to explain that some people just aren't that proactive--what she and I would think of as obvioius to do, might not even cross some peoples' minds.
I gave Mommy a whole bunch of ideas on advertising, starting with the HUGE posters (which I'd already told her to do, and had hoped she'd have up before I got there). Somebody has Stevie, and we just have to figure out who!
6-8-08 - An Interlude
April and May were super-intense months--there were days when the phone just, plain didn't stop ringing. I guess that the animals were feeling The Call of Spring and were out wandering, but now they're relaxing into the long days. I haven't had one, single search since the 3rd! I decided not to "look" for work, which I normally would, but just take the time off. I got a vegetable garden planted, got the house cleaned, and took the dogs on some play-time walks!
I'll tell a little anecdote, to take up the spare space. About a week ago, I got an email from someone who was hoping for my support in a campaign of sorts to convince people to keep their cats indoor-only, because of predators and cars. Now, you might think that someone who deals constantly with people whose cats have gone missing, and who has found plenty of evidence of animals that were killed by coyotes, would be all up on that campaign. But I just think it's really a personal choice. Here's my reply to her:
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"I do actually find tons of coyote scat and other evidence, even in the middle of the city. The fact that coyotes are in the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, Coyote Creek in San Jose, and *any* place where there's more than 20 - 50 acres of openspace isn't surprising at all. They're endemic.
I don't necessarily think that cats need to be indoors for that reason alone, though. I *do* think that the owners need to be realistic and understand that they are risking their cats when they let them outside--to predator, car, angry neighbor, anything else. And I just worked a case where a woman's condo burned down, and 2 of her 5 (indoor only) cats died in the fire. One jumped four floors to the ground, and the other two are missing. So indoor-only isn't a true safe-zone, either. If people are willing to accept the risks, just like if you're willing to accept the risk of going without a seatbelt when you drive, then that needs to be their decision. I know this is going to sound a bit shocking to some of you, but a coyote kill is quick and painless--and at least that animal had a few more years than it would have if it had been euthanized at the shelter. It's not the worst thing in the world, as far as the cat's concerned.
I have many owners who get their outdoor-access cats back after a "missing" scare, and I explain to them that it's about risks and benefits. It might happen again in a day or in 15 years or never, but if they feel that the benefits the cats get from being outside outweigh the risks involved, and if they're willing to accept the potential consequences, then it needs to be their decision about whether or not the continue to let the cat out. Some do, some don't.
You also need to look at the human-animal-bond. For some people it's very, very much stronger than for other people. If one of my dogs got lost, I'd tear the neighborhood down house by house until I found him. But some people (believe it or not) don't have that strength of bond. And they're much more willing to accept the risks involved.
It has to be the individual owner's (educated) decision."
6-3-08 - Update on Boy - He's Home!!!!
I got a call today--Boy was on the front porch when Daddy got home from work! Woo-hoo! I had the feeling that he was going to show up on his own, and, sure enough, he did!
6-2-08 - Boy
Boy is a 1-year old male cat in San Anselmo. He and his littermate, Girl, are both outdoor-access cats, although she tends to stay much closer to home than he does. Mommy and Daddy live in a small apartment right next to a semi-busy street (but there's a 4-way stop right there) and adjacent to a little creek. Most of the houses against the creek don't have back fences, but many have front fences, and the rest of the houses in the neighborhood are "normal."
The last time Boy was seen was four days ago in the morning. He's friendly with people but aloof to other cats. He's a tree-climber, and several months ago he disappeared overnight. There is a house under construction just down the street, and the day that he went missing Mommy noticed that the neighbors a couple houses down had a U-haul and were apparently moving out.
Mommy didn't have anything that was exclusively Boy's, for scenting, but Girl tends to never go farther than 30 - 40 feet from the building. He's an outdoor cat, so we wouldn't be able to trail him from Point A to Point B, but I decided to use his specific scent (or, "their" scents) to find out what he territory was. We got a *lot* of positive scent into the creek and somewhat to the East. We came back out and tried the next street down (where the creek wound over to) and got a mild amount. We went the other direction to where the construction and U-haul were, but didn't really get anything. We went back into the creek to where the scent seemed to stop, and I decided I wanted to explore a little bit more. It totally made sense to me that he might have gone farther along the creek than he normally does, and was hanging out there. Sure enough, when I had Loki poke around at the corners, he got another trail leading farther down the creek--and it seemed pretty fresh.
At that point, I told Mommy that I really thought Boy was out joyriding down the creek, but we should do some house-to-house checking just to make sure he wasn't in a crawlspace or injured under a deck. She agreed, and we checked about 8 houses and yards. No sign of him, but we found a look-alike cat! If Mommy hadn't been there (and if that cat's person hadn't been there) I would have said it was him! We also went to the construction house and the U-haul house. The U-haul house was vacant, and the window was open, so we called and didn't hear anything. I told Mommy to come back later when the dogs were gone and call again, just in case. At the construction house, we found an opening to the crawlspace. I sent Loki in, and when he came out I left it unlatched just in case Boy had gotten trapped inside when they were doing work.
I gave Mommy a list of things to do to try to get him back, including putting a live-trap down the creek (after checking with the people who live there, to let them know that their cats might get trapped), feeding stations, and advertising methods. I have a feeling this guy is going to pop back in on his own within a couple of days...
May 2008
5-30-08 - Update on Bella
Bella was sighted late last week twice in the same area, farther south along the creek than she'd been before. We got a trail camera (motion sensor, with infrared flash for night-time) and put it out at the creek near where she'd been seen. We put out a pile of her favorite food--a dog-food base with cheese, chicken, and gravy. We went three nights at that spot but didn't get her on camera. We got foxes, raccoons, and birds, but no Bella.
We moved the camera up north about a mile, and did the same setup with the food. The first night we got a picture on the camera which very well might have been her! It was just a profile, because, as it turns out, the camera needs to be about 5 - 6 feet away for the infrared flash to work properly. The ears and nose were right. I'm not sure about the lower jaw, but she was turned at an angle so it could have been her. The second night, though, we got her for sure! It was a "back end" shot, but it was her curly tail, no mistake!
We decided at that point to move slowly--we knew where she was, and we wanted to try to get her into a habit of coming to this same spot. We made some modifications to the environment--small enough that it shouldn't chase her away, but moving towards the goal of trapping her. Meanwhile, I researched "net traps" and we had some conferences with Mommy and a couple of other people who are experienced in building elaborate traps.
The third night we got a *lot* of activity at the spot. There were many foxes and raccoons, but we were pretty comfortable that she was one of the "profile only" ones. However, because of the massive increase in foxes, we decided to change the "go slowly" plan to a "get her before she leaves!" plan. On the fourth night the camera malfunctioned and we didn't get any pictures, but meanwhile Daddy and a very good neighbor friend who has been helping did the prep-work for setting up a net trap.
On the fifth night we still didn't get any pictures, but we went ahead with the plan anyway. Neighbor and Daddy built an *awesome* trap, with poles ringing the tree where the food was stationed, net attached to the poles, and weights and pulleys to pull the net up when she got into it. We all got ready for an all-night stakeout. Neighbor brought out his motor home, and we had me, Neighbor, Mommy, Daddy, and Mommy's Friend.
Neighbor (who is ex-marine and *awesome* at the "dirty work!") found a spot to stake out all night long. Daddy was about 100 yards away waiting, Mommy (who was sick) was in the RV sleeping, Friend was with her, and I went back and forth between Daddy and Friend. It was at the same time a very long night, and it also went very quickly. At about 1am, Neighbor came out to warm up and said that there were nothing but foxes so far, and a lot of them. He said that they came right up to where he was staked out to sniff at him. A couple of hours later, we heard a pack of coyotes howling. Then, about 4am, Neighbor came back out to stretch his legs. He said that the foxes just hadn't ever left, pretty much the whole time. They weren't eating, just hanging out like it was their new 'hood. I took Loki out (the dogs were sleeping in the RV with Mommy and Friend--Anubis was curled up under the covers with Mommy!) and we went up and down the creek, hoping to get rid of the foxes. At 5am, Neighbor came back out and said he had to be done. He had to be somewhere at about 9am and needed to get some sleep. I went and sat in the spot until it was light out, and the moment I sat down a fox showed up. I jumped up and chased it away, but I knew that we'd lost our opportunity in this spot. Bella just wasn't going to come back while it was still Fox Turf.
We did a debrief and talked about our options. Mommy and Daddy are going to get more trail cameras, and we're going to set up three spots per night with food and camera. Mommy and Daddy will check the cameras very first thing in the morning, and if we get her on camera, we set up the trap that same day and do the stakeout the next night. If we don't get her on camera, we try three more spots, until we've been up and down the creek at least a couple of times.
I'm still crossing my fingers that she hasn't moved on or been taken in by someone, but it's a little bit frustrating that we haven't had a sighting in over a week, and the last (and only definite) camera picture was three nights ago.
5-29-08 - Update on Sabina--She's Home!
I spoke with Friend earlier today, and we came up with a plan of wedging the flap on the cat-door so it was one-way only. If she let herself in agai
