Bounty Hunting...animal style

Meow's disappearance has opened my eyes to the world beyond shelters and rescue groups when it comes to finding lost animals. When I went into APS of Durham yesterday I talked to one of the women we deal with for our print sponsorship of their shelter and she told me to go to craigslist. Really?!?! I kind of thought that was for old TVs, romantic connections, and listing apartments for rent...but animals? Skip over the pets section and go to Lost and Found and there is a mecca of Found and Lost animals. So meow got a listing...
Then it was on to www.petharbor.com and www.trianglelostpets.org for listings. You can post animals Lost and animals Found, and search by type, breed, primary color, age, etc. For the past 36 hours I have been glued to these websites hunting for our kitty. Yet, maybe...just maybe...the old fashioned flyer worked. We received a phone call around 10pm from someone that got one of our flyers. He received an email a couple of nights ago from a women that had found a cat, and he seemed to think that the picture she took and the picture on our flyer matched. Of course, he wouldn't give us her contact information because it wasn't his to give (yet he told me her address....that makes a ton of sense), but he emailed her my contact information.
Well of course, Kyle and I couldn't just sit here, so we went out and left more flyers...specifically on her street so that when she gets up in the morning in case she doesn't check her email, she'll see the flyer.
All of this got me to thinking about all of the points of contact one would need to hit in order to effectively find lost animals. I think of shelters, she thought of her neighborhood but not the one connected to it (ours)..until I talked to APS, neither of us thought of the web. Now I want to write a letter for our local paper about the top ten things to do if you find or lose a pet. Without a bird's eye view hitting the streets can take forever depending on the animal's size, and flyers that you post on poles can get wet in the rain.
As we approach the winter and the holiday season the weather poses a bigger risk to misplaced pets, and the holidays will cause many "gifted pets" to be "re-gifted" to the streets when the time and expense become to much of a burden. If we could effectively return more lost pets home, our shelters would have more space. Our pets are indoor pets...yet one got out. Luckily she is spayed, so we won't be adding to the overpopulation issue, but she wasn't micro chipped. I honestly didn't think our cats would NEED it. They'll all have an appointment with the vet VERY soon.
So please, hold your fuzzy ones tight and learn about your local resources for lost and found pets; get yours spayed and neutered (many shelters run discounted programs) and invest in a microchip. If you love them and you lose them it will break your heart.

Here's to hoping Meow will be home tomorrow!!

Until next time

Dabble

Moment of Silence...

I don't have a Chic Moment today, and let's face it...I haven't had one in about a week. The last week has been a whirlwind. Abby and I got home from NY and both developed colds. She spiked fevers and was congested, I was MAJORLY congested and had a throat from hell. Fast forward 6 days and she's better (still sneezing a bit which is actually ridiculously cute), and I'm still blowing crap out of my nose. Needless to say between the two of us, I barely left my bedroom in the last week...never mind the house.
Last night Kyle and I FINALLY had a Moment of Silence. Abby was down for her 1st part of the night, we watched Boardwalk Empire (one of our favorite HBO shows), and we were getting ready for the nighttime ritual diaper change, wake up for feeding, blanket, and bed when Kyle looked at me and said...."Kate....Where's Meow??!?!"
This is Meow:

Kyle rescued her from a gas station about three and a half years ago and brought her to be an indoor/outdoor kitty while he was living with Anthony and Clay ("The Uncles" as Abby will learn to call them...also our business partners) When Kyle moved in with me December of '08 so did Meow....but not until she gave birth to 3 kittens March of '08, one of which we still have, "Gizmo". This little lady above hit what I like to call the "Kitty Lottery". She is the sweetest thing and nicknamed "Softie" because she loves to cuddle and really is the softest thing in the world.

Anyway, Kyle looked frantically for what felt like forever while I nursed Abby, and I could tell there came a point where he started looking slower because maybe she had hidden to pass away (she's young, but stranger things have happened). He didn't find her. I put Abby down, and he took a bowl full of dry food outside and walked around the neighborhood shaking it (a sound she knows well)....nothing....

She escaped our house days ago.....and with everything going on...ridiculously long work hours....sickness...and the fact that our cats really keep to themselves and practically never come into our room (their choice)....it was finally in our Moment of Silence that we missed our cuddly couch potato.

Posters are going up, I have contacted all of the local shelters, and Kyle is going door to door starting tomorrow, but now it's time for a different kind of Moment of Silence.

It's time to say a little prayer that Meow will come home, return to us with her soft little "Meows" (how she got her name), with her beauty mark (she has been called Meow Crawford several times), and her soft protruding chin. I miss the random pieces of paper and coupons she wound find around the house and carry to our bedroom doorway, we called them "offerings" similar to the dead animals she used to bring before she became indoor only (but much cleaner). It's time to hope that she's safe, and maybe, just maybe, someone brought her inside because she was so sweet and we can find the right house if she can't get home to us.

Life is not supposed to get this crazy, and it makes me appreciate all of the people that work with rescue organizations that much more. Situations like this is why I am so adamant about supporting places like the Animal Protection Society of Durham both on a corporate and a personal level.

Please come home Meow....

We miss you.....here's a Moment of Silence for you.....


Until next time....

Dabble