Hi, Marta and Jackie,
(Jackie, we spoke with Marta last night to see if she could help in our
search for Jess. She thought he was close by, within a block or two, so we
continued our search for him this morning). After searching backyards along
San Lorenzo (one block south of us), we turned our attention to yards
between our house on Vincente and Portland Ave. After nearly three hours of
looking, Dwight was nearly out of time (he had a plane to catch) and I was
feeling disheartened. We had stopped to talk about what to do when my
hand-held pet locator beeped and flashed. It has a line of lights--red to
orange to yellow to green--that light up and beep when we're close to the
cat and his radio tag. I saw just one red light--but that's enough to tell
me he was close by. I pointed at a nearby garage and all the lights flashed,
right up to green. Luckily the owner of the house was home, and she opened
the garage. I didn't see Jess but the lights and beeps indicated we were
still close, though he must have run to the back of the garage or, more
likely, into the crawlspace it connected to. I entered the crawl space off
the garage and crawled on hands on knees to the very back left corner of
the space, and there he was, cowering and mewing. After sitting quietly for
a minute and calling to him, I got him to calm down and come to me. He was
unhurt, just hungry and thirsty and scared. The woman was very apologetic
that she hadn't heard him mewing. He was terrified of her garage door, which
makes loud noises, so that may explain why he hadn't come home even when the
door had been opened a number of times over the weekend.
I'd walked by this house numerous times with my pet locator over the past
few days without seeing it register anything. I think that my locator didn't
register before because Jess must have been hiding in the far rear of the
crawl space, away from the sidewalk. Perhaps when Dwight and I stopped to
talk in front of the house where he was trapped he heard our voices and
shaking can of treats and came closer to the garage door.
We are so relieved to have found him safe and relatively sound. I'm taking
him to the vet today to see if his eyes have suffered much from not getting
four days of medication. Since getting home, he has eaten two bowls of cat
food, drunk water, and slept in his usual chair.
A question for both of you: we are looking into ways to keep Jess from
wandering. Marta, you mentioned cat fencing, which looks doable. An electric
collar and electric fence would be less obtrusive, but you seemed to have an
objection to using that method. I'd be interested in hearing from both of
you the pros and cons of that versus the non-electric fencing.
Thank you both for helping us in our search for Jess!
Warmly,
Deborah and Dwight
Website: http://www.loc8tor.com/Store/
animal communicator: www.martawilliams.com
(My response to Deborah's email)
"The reason why the indicator did not show Jess' position was because he was not there. As we found by the track, he was a long ways away."
I highly recommend this device. It can help to locate pets who are close by.
Jackie
Jess is an indoor/outdoor seven year old, neutered, black DSH. He has a collar on with no tags, and he is microchipped. There have been no sightings of him since he went missing, which was less than 48 hours when I was called. He is on medication for a recently diagnosed eye condition. Due to the eye condition, his person brought a tag to put on his collar called a "Locator." His person would use the hand held device to go find him when he would not come home in time for his medication. The device is a is credit card sized and has a type of "hot" or "cold" set of lights on it to let her know when she was near Jess.
We found his track leading away from the house and then into distant neighborhoods and in and out of canyons, along cliffs and more canyons. Finally, we came out into neighborhoods and then followed it for quite a ways. Jess' person finally stopped the track after five hours. She told me she did not feel we were accurately following Jess since she did not feel that he would ever go this far. I explained that either he was chased from the area of his home or he traveled a little further that day and got lost, which would lead him in areas where he was unfamiliar with. To me, he made it back to the area of his home, though unable to make it back completely, which he is able to do. He is an experienced outdoor cat. He was hiding in the garage, since he was unfamiliar with the area, when they found him.
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