Thursday, March 28, 2024
animal welfarecats

Have You Seen Oscar?

oscar, missing from glendale, carnegie, near pittsburgh, pa
Photo of Oscar

“Oscar is 11 months old and has never been outside before. He has been missing since Sept 24 from Glendale, Scott Twp. near St Ignatius Church (Pittsburgh, PA area). If seen please email me: [email protected]. Thank you for your help. I have looked everywhere.”

If you live in this area, work in a shelter or veterinary clinic, or manage a stray/feral colony and see a new cat come in who looks like Oscar, please contact the e-mail in the post.

Finding a missing pet

While our first initiative is to panic and run around screaming their name, finding a missing pet includes taking a lot of other steps both in physically searching and in getting the word out the pet is missing to neighbors, local police and agencies and local shelters and veterinary clinics. It may be difficult to sit down and make phone calls and print out a flyer on your computer, but all that effort can only help you find your pet.

Especially pets who have always been indoors are out of their own territory and need to somehow set up new territory while they are frightened, usually hungry, and possibly injured.

In addition, the behavior of lost cats is different from lost dogs—aside from the most outgoing personalities, cats tend to find a spot they deem to be safe and stay there, often not moving except to find a “litter” spot. They’ll enter a garage through a broken window pane and stay in there, or crawl under a shed, for instance, and be impossible to see at all if you don’t specifically search these places, calmly, quietly, and with a flashlight.

Visit the website for the Missing Pet Partnership, founded by Kat Albrecht, author of the award-winning book, THE LOST PET CHRONICLES: Adventures of a K-9 Cop Turned Pet Detective (Bloomsbury, April 2004) for tips on searching and making contact as well as successful stories that may give you ideas on finding a pet who is lost. I was fortunate enough to attend a presentation by Kat at a conference a few years ago, and the information she gives is invaluable and truly fascinating in understanding how cats behave when lost.

This page gives specific information on searching for and successfully finding lost cats: http://www.missingpetpartnership.org/recovery-lostcattips.php

Good luck in finding Oscar—I’ll be sure to be on the lookout as I pass through Glendale. If anyone finds him, please let us know!

Bernadette

From health and welfare to rescue and adoption stories, advocacy and art, factual articles and fictional stories, "The Creative Cat" offers both visual and verbal education and entertainment about cats for people who love cats, pets and animals of all species.

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