Perceptint Musings

My family was about ready to leave our house in Oregon for the last time. The last thing we were doing was meeting with our realtor. In the middle of that meeting, we got a call from the people who were shipping our two cats cross country.

The cats had left a few days ahead of us, and we were told that Maya, our female, had escaped the van at a truck stop in Laramie, Wyoming.
 
They told us they searched all day for her, but she ran off into some junked out cars and they could not find her. They had posted a $500 reward for the return of the cat, but that was the most they could do. They had to get moving for the rest of the animals they were delivering, and our now solo male cat. We didn’t know what to do; we could only think that we’d never see her again.
 
Our reassuring realtor chimed in with, “Someone is going to find that cat. I just know they will.”
 
The rest of that meeting was a jumble as we finished up the agreement to sell our house and get our two daughters off to our hotel for the night. And all we could think about was Maya. I called a good friend in town that had two cats and told him what had happened. The rest just doesn’t seem possible but it is true and can be verified by others.
 
While driving my two crying daughters to our hotel, I get a call from my friend. He and his wife were searching for and posting to local animal resources in Laramie. What great friends!  In their search, they had also found an article about a woman in the Laramie area who is known for recovering people’s lost pets. He had called the number from the article, and left a message.
 
Finally after getting into our hotel room, I get another call from my friend. He has spoken with Cathy, the animal detective, and she happens to be in Laramie at the moment, very close to the truck stop. I call Cathy and give her a brief description of what happened. I also ask her to call the driver and get additional details about where everything happened.
 
Soon I get a call back that Cathy is going to put up posters advertising the reward. She also said that based on talking with the driver, she has a good idea where to start looking and she was going to take her search dog to assist in better locating where Maya might have gone when she ran from the van.

So now, we’re in the hotel trying to get our girls to sleep and Maya, as we later learn, is just trotting about on her own private junkyard journey. The unfolding conversations with Cathy and Curt, her husband and partner in Cold Nose Investigators, felt like we were watching a web based episode from an Animal Planet investigation that happened to feature our family cat.

We flew from Oregon to Michigan and picked up the conversation where we left off online. First the pictures showed up. Cat prints in the snow from a long-haired cat.

The crashed out semi that Zoe, the search dog had honed in on.

Maya was lost on a Monday and by Friday, Cathy had determined that Maya was only coming out at night based on the prints. Friday night at 3 in the morning, they saw her for the first time using night vision. Cathy said she appeared to be on a summer stroll in the -1 degree Wyoming night. That’s our Maya. And all I could think was that the capture of Maya was quickly becoming a paramilitary affair.

What impressed us the most throughout the whole thing, was Cathy and Curt’s determination. They were out looking for Maya every night, in extreme conditions, using very high tech equipment and we’d never even met them or sent them one dollar. And I could tell from Cathy’s voice on the phone that once they had seen Maya, they knew they could catch her.

And like some Disney on Tundra Ice show with a  happy ending, two nights later they did catch Maya. They had determined where she was feeding, the path she was taking, and they adjusted their strategies every night to get her into that trap. Sunday, November 25th we got a call in the morning that Curt and Cathy had Maya and were headed back to their house to warm her up, and see how she looked.

No one could believe it, but it was true. The animal delivery people were great too, they went out of their way to head back to Wyoming and pickup Maya and deliver her to us as originally planned. But none of it would have been possible without the Internet, some great people, some great detective work, and lots of well wishes and thoughts.

The thing people say most often after we tell the story is “There really are pet detectives?” We can’t say enough about Cold Nose Investigators and what great people they are and what professionals they are in their work. Be sure to learn more about them and tell them thanks on my behalf at www.coldnoseinvestigators.com.

It still doesn’t seem real, especially now that she’s here and lounging about in her usual diva manner. And that it happened to our cat while we the rest of us moved cross country makes it even stranger. Our furniture showed up before she did. Maya must have longed for her last taste of the wintry west and from what Cathy said, she seemed to like it.

I am constantly reminded that this type of “rescue operation” wouldn’t have been possible without the Internet and search engines. The timing of this event was crucial and the speed with which the right information was accessed was impressive.

Trying to mount this using the phone and dialing could have taken a day more to coordinate. The catalog of information that is available to us at any given time on any given topic is mind blowing, and Maya sitting here purring away will always remind me of the ultimate good that is possible through being connected.

© 2008 Keith Boswell