15. Looking for a Lost Cat

[soft piano music playing]
Narrator: Hello and welcome back to the Animal Friendly podcast. 
This episode is about my search for Goldie, my cat who went missing.  At the time of recording – Oct 2023 – he has been lost for a month and we still haven’t found him.
I had to be away from home for five days so my three cats were staying with some friends.  Unfortunately, Goldie was determined to escape and one day he ran down a hallway and actually crashed his way through a small glass panel in a door. He ran across the garden and over a wall and into a field of thick brambles and other plant growth. Despite their best efforts, my friends couldn’t catch him or lure him back. 
So, in this episode I talk about some of the things we’re doing to try to locate him, but also talk about the community of people who are involved with missing cats; whether it’s those who report cats that they’ve found or the people who maintain social media sites for lost and found pets. There are cat rescue groups and people who feed feral cat colonies and all these try to give help to those of us who are looking for our beloved furry companions.
You may think it’ll be a sad episode – and of course parts of it are – but it’s also an episode about community and people being kind and helpful and going out of their way to do something for a stranger or to help an animal.  
When Goldie escaped, my friends put out a humane trap - so this is a long rectangular cage with food at the end and when the cat goes into it the door closes behind him. 
I’ll say right now that this has been out for weeks but we didn’t catch anything in it, so both my cat and the local wildlife were too clever to fall for it. 
Then we put up posters telling people that he’s missing with photographs of him and contact details. 
My friends went around and alerted their neighbours to be on the lookout for a stray tabby cat. 
The first thing I did when I got back was go out walking and calling, and that’s an activity that continues whenever I can get out to the locality, every few days. I walk the roads and laneways, circling back and forth. Calling out in a casual way, as if I were talking to him, rather than frantically calling. Sometimes I shake a jar of kibble like I would at home to call the cats in. 
[sound of narrator calling to a cat outside with wind blowing and bird sounds] “Goldie? Goldie-bear. Where's Goldie? Where are you hiding, babba? Goldie? Come on, Goldie, come for dinner. Goldie-bear, Goldie-bear, where are you hiding? Where's my little cat? Where's my little fella? Goldie-bear. Goldie. Goldie-bear. Where are you, Goldie? [Sound of crows] There are some crows over there. Goldie-bear, come on out. Who wants dinner? Come on, Goldie. Come on, Goldie, who's a hungry fella? Who's a hungry cat? Who's a hungry fella?”
Narrator: When you have talked to the fields in a conversational tone for a couple of hours – or more - you do begin to feel insane. You walk past houses blathering away loudly and you think, I must look so pitiful, I must look really mad.  But I kept reminding myself that they hadn’t seen me doing it for 2 hours, only the few minutes it took to pass their house. 
Then you have to stop at regular intervals to listen for any answering calls, any meouws.
I use those pauses to picture him in my head. I would see him in his bed, having a big stretch and then falling back to sleep with one leg still sticking up in the air. Trying to push in next to the other cats when they’re asleep. Goldie loves affection and he rubs up against the other cats all the time, often to their intense annoyance. They meouw crossly but it doesn’t put him off. 
I feed him separately on a bench outside the kitchen – to stop him from hassling the other cats when they’re eating – and he has perfected a way of jumping up and turning in midair to land facing me, so there isn’t a second of delay in getting to his bowl when I put it down. I picture that magnificent manouever often. 
When I have him in the forefront of my mind I start walking and calling again, and my voice, which may have become flat and monotone with the repetition of the same words, is now warm and smiling again. “Come on Goldie, come on my fella, come and have some crunchies. I know you like crunchies.”
I sing as well because it’s very tiring trying to talk all the time and it’s your voice the cat is responding to, and in fact, the more relaxed you are, the better. 
So I sing whatever comes to mind and very random snippets of songs come out: Fly Me To the Moon, Bohemian Rhapsody, Secret Love from Calamity Jane 
[Musical clip of Doris Day singing Secret Love] "So I told a friendly star, the way that dreamers often do, just how wonderful you are, and why I’m so in love with you". 
Narrator: PJ Harvey’s new song; Lovesong by The Cure. I know, you’d think it would be Lovecats but it’s not. Aldous Harding, The Barrel...uh, Moon River. Whatever tunes come into my head. Swapping in Goldie’s name for the words of the chorus. That song from the War of the Worlds. 
[Musical clip of Justin Hayward singing Forever Autumn] "I watch the birds fly south across the autumn sky, and one by one they disappear. I wish that I was flying with them, now you're not here."    
Narrator: There are things you must do online as well. 
There are Facebook groups dedicated to lost and found pets and these feel like an absolute lifeline when you are drowning in the fear of what might have happened to him and how you might never see him again. They give you something practical to do. f
The vets put his information on their Facebook page and they tell me about Galway/Mayo Lost and Found Animals page. I also send his photo and information to Galway Cat Rescue. 
There are national pages as well for lost and found pets. 

There is one group called found cats only (Ireland), which is excellent because it only has pictures of cats that are found or cats that are hanging around someone’s house and they’re wondering if it belongs to someone. This means you can scroll through and look for any photos of cats that might be yours without being distracted by photos of other missing cats - which sometimes look like yours and you stop, thinking you’ve found him but then realise, oh, that’s another missing cat. 
I used to avoid all these pages – or at least, I didn’t follow them – because I thought they would be an endless stream of despair and sadness.  
Now I have to search them every few hours and what really strikes me is how kind people are. There are so many people posting photographs of animals they notice around their locality, animals that may be lost. With messages like: This cat has been coming into our garden the last few days, does he belong to anyone? This dog is in the Lidl carpark and seems lost. This lovely cat has been seen wandering around the Athenry area. We found this cat, she seems hungry, does she belong to anyone?
Once in a while someone will answer and say, oh, that’s Murphy, or Teddy, or whatever. Yeah, he wanders all over that area, don’t worry about him. That makes you laugh. The photograph of the wandering cat being held up and his contempt for all humans is quite visible in his demeanour.
I have joined a club that no one wants to be part of but at least everyone here understands me. I feel a real kinship with everyone who is out there looking and hoping and I get a huge burst of happiness every time I read of animals that have been found or that have returned home because I know how much it means to them, both animal and human.  And there are stories of cats that were lost for weeks or even months and were eventually found or came home.
Well-meaning friends do sometimes tell me that cats like to wander and he’ll return home when he’s ready and I have to repeat that he went missing in an area that isn’t his home. And in order to return home he would have to travel about 20 miles, crossing bogland and lakes and dense forest. And despite what movies would like us to believe, cats generally don’t undertake major expeditions. They wander, yes, but within a range of a few miles. So I’m not holding out any hope that he’ll rock up at the door someday.
But I am holding out hope that I’ll get a call from a vet saying we have a little cat called Goldie here.  He’s microchipped which means that any vet can scan his neck and get all my details. 
Many cats on the lost and found pages have gone missing from their homes, but others escaped while they were being brought to the vets or being minded by friends or escaped from a car. Or they went into a workman’s van for warmth and then got out when the car arrived at some random destination.  
I’m impressed by the sheer variety of names that cats are given: Bonnie, Willow, Livy, Peaches, Seymour, Billy, Felix, Jess, Jinx, Tubs, Klaus, Luna, Julie, Goose, Marci, Haku, Walter, Salem, Rayo. Repetition of a name is infrequent and I haven’t seen another Goldie yet. 
When searching for a lost cat you’re advised to start close and work outwards. You’re also advised to go back over ground you’ve already covered because the cat mightn’t have heard you the first time, or may have been too scared to answer or come out. 
I found myself channelling Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans, especially in the first few days, when there was so much to be done. Posters, Facebook, walking around. Trying to fit it all in while still going to work every day.  
[Sound clip from Last of the Mohicans] "You stay alive. If they don't kill you, they'll take you north up to Huron land. You submit, do you hear? You're strong, you survive. You stay alive, no matter what occurs. I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you."  
Narrator: Stay alive Goldie, I’m working as fast as I can. 
After a couple of weeks with no sign of him I widened my search parameters. In doing so I came across the Réalt na Mara Millenium Labyrinth which is in the grounds of Furbo church.  
A labyrinth is different to a maze. A maze is designed to be confusing and you kinda have to solve the problem to get from one point to the other. A labyrinth is only one, unbroken path that winds and twist around within the design. So a labyrinth or a maze can both have walls, but a labyrinth doesn't necessarily have to have walls, it can just be flat on the ground, like the one at Furbo church. Labyrinths have been used for thousands of years in various cultures as a way of meditating or praying. 

The idea is that the inward journey, uh, on the inward journey, you purge yourself of negative thoughts and confusion, ahm, and all that sort of thing. And then the journey outwards is one of empowerment, so you bring out all the creative energy that you picked up on the inward journey. I only discovered this afterwards when I got home and looked it up. So I walked into the labyrinth but then I just stepped out,  I didn’t follow the path out. So I’ll have to go back and do it again. 

Labyrinths are seen as a metaphor for life and I have to say you really can’t help but feel that as you walk.  The path is all laid out so you never walk the same stones twice but you often feel like you do. You think, I’ve walked this way before, haven't I? Or, haven’t I already done this part? And quite a few times you think you’re on the home stretch but then the path winds away again and suddenly you’re going off in what seems like the wrong direction entirely. It keeps twisting and turning and you often feel like you're working really hard and making no progress. So, just like life. But you keep going. 
So it is with the search for Goldie. 
People are lovely when I ask, in shops and cafes, if I can put up a poster about him. 
In the past I’ve gone around giving out flyers promoting my work or other things and people definitely have a wary expression when you approach with a pile of flyers – like they don’t want to be hassled if you're trying to sell them something – but as soon as they realise it’s for a lost cat they’re eager to help. "Yes, yes, put it in the window there, when did he go missing, give me another one, I’ll put it here where people can see it". 
Some people text me with photos of cats that they’ve seen, with locations and times. Some photos are obviously not him but others could be so I follow up, going to the areas and walking around for hours.
After a couple of weeks I got really tired and I had to remind myself to eat well and get sleep and don’t get run down. 
An article online says that cats gnerally return home very late at night or very early in the morning. So I walk in the early morning. By sunrise I’ve been here for an hour and a half, walking in the dawn and the quiet and seeing the world wake up.  Some houses have lights on, some are silent and dark. I do feel like a cat, having the roads and the area to myself. You can see why they would want to travel at night. As I walk, I think that there must be hundreds of cats living around here, even if only every 3rd or 4th house had a cat, and yet I only see two the whole time. Cats are magnificent hiders. Good for them, but terrible for my purposes. 
Sometimes I walk at night, after sunset, shining a torch around to try and pick up the reflection of cats eyes. WB Yeats wrote a poem called The Cat and the Moon. 
[Sound clip of Robert Lindsay reading The Cat and the Moon].
        The cat went here and there
        And the moon spun round like a top,
        And the nearest kin of the moon,
        The creeping cat, looked up.
        Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
        For, wander and wail as he would,
        The pure cold light in the sky
        Troubled his animal blood.
        Minnaloushe runs in the grass
        Lifting his delicate feet.
        Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
        When two close kindred meet,
        What better than call a dance?
        Maybe the moon may learn,
        Tired of that courtly fashion,
        A new dance turn.
        Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
        From moonlit place to place,
        The sacred moon overhead
        Has taken a new phase.
        Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
        Will pass from change to change,
        And that from round to crescent,
        From crescent to round they range?
        Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
        Alone, important and wise,
        And lifts to the changing moon
        His changing eyes.
Narrator: I realise that the next time someone asks me how many cats I have that I’ll have to think about the answer. I could say I have two and leave it at that. Or I could say I have three, but one is missing? Passed away? Living somewhere else? 
How to explain it? I don’t know. What I actually have now is two cats who live with me and one Schrodinger’s cat. 
Schrodinger’s cat, in popular science, is understood to be a cat that is alive and dead at the same time. He could be dead, he could be alive, we don’t know, so he’s both. 
How that came about is that Erwin Schrodinger was chatting to Albert Einstein one day and he devised a thought experiment to illustrate a point about quantum mechanics. So, it’s called a thought experiment because it’s something you imagine. You’re not meant to do it, even if you do have some Uranium or Lawrencium or other radioactive stuff lying around. 

The idea is that a cat, a flask of poison and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If a Geiger counter (which is also in the box) detects radioactivity, the flask is shattered and it releases the poison which kills the cat. Schrodinger and Einstein were arguing about different interpretations of what’s happening here. One interpretation says that you don’t know if the cat is alive or dead, so he’s actually both at the same time. Other interpretations say well, he’s either alive or dead, he can’t be both. The argument is kind of about when does the cat stop being alive and dead and actually become alive or dead. 
So that’s the position I find myself in, I now have a Schrodinger’s cat. I don’t know if Goldie is alive or dead so for me, it’s both at the same time. I hope he’s alive, but my hope won’t change reality if he’s already dead. Other people who have lost pets will know exactly what I mean.
My last effort in finding Goldie was to go around to all the houses in the locality and put flyers in their post-boxes. I’m lucky that I have a few good photographs of him that show some of the markings that would help identify him, his white chin, the positioning of the stripes on his legs.
You might consider doing this with your pet – taking some mugshots; front, sides, face and body, distinctive markings in the fur. Because people will send you photos of stray cats that they’ve seen and these can often just be fleeting glimpses – so you’re trying to identify a cat from the back, or from above or in dark lighting. Even if you look at photos you’ve taken of your pets you’ll see that they can look very different depending on the lighting or their positioning.
It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking to see shots of missing pets online because they’re always of the animal in happier times; the cat rolled onto his back on the couch, the one sleeping with her paws wrapped around someone’s arm, videos of cats playing together, a photo of a cat peeking out of a cardboard box. 
Then of course, there are all the stray cats that aren’t claimed. All those lovely cats that have no one looking for them. This is why we need animal rescue groups so badly, so that there’s someone who will take in those cats and find new homes for them. Animal rescue organisations receive so little funding compared to the total amount of money that goes to charity in this country. If you are a person who donates to charity, please consider giving a proportion of it to animal charities. They work so hard and they change lives, both human and animal.
I do sometimes wonder - what if I’m giving out flyers and doing all this work in search of a cat that’s no longer alive? But then I realise it’s important for me for when I have to give up. To be able to say I’ve done all I can and the only thing now is to wait until someone contacts me. So that I don’t have any regrets or remorse when I do actively stop looking.
[Sound clip from Aisling's song from The Book of Kells] "You must go where I cannot, Pangur Ban, Pangur Ban, Níl sa saol seo ach ceo, Is ní bheimid beo, ach seal beag gearr." [Translation: There is nothing in this life but mist, and we will only be alive for a short time.]
I’d like to wrap up by reading a letter written by someone who did find their cat, a letter to share the good news and thank everyone for helping. 
"Hi Everyone,
I just wanted to write a note thanking everyone for their kind thoughts and help in finding Alice. It was a total fluke that I found her last night. She was trapped in the rafters of an abandoned warehouse on a deserted industrial estate that I just happened to wander into on my way back home. I had been walking the streets for an hour and this was my last stop before going home for another night of sadness. 
I've been walking the streets calling her name for a week and was really resigned to never seeing her again. But this time she heard me and started crying. The problem was she was the other side of a metal door and a sturdy padlock. Luckily two very kind men were still in their units and had a crowbar and long ladder between them. When we got into the warehouse Alice was trapped in the rafters about fifteen feet off the ground. The place was full of pigeons and I imagine she was hunting when she got in through the roof and then couldn't get out. She was wedged and would have died there if I hadn't found her.
I don't know what to say about the whole thing other than it was total luck to find her two minutes from our house. Had it not been for the kindness of strangers we would never have got her back. The one thing that this has taught is how nice people really are; how kind, how sympathetic, how supportive. I hope these words are a small thank you to everyone. 
I now have the profound pleasure of walking the streets one last time and taking down all of the posters I put up and telling everyone I have spoken to that we found her. I can't explain how finding Alice really feels, the odds are just so slim that I'm going to have to buy a lottery ticket tonight.
Have a lovely weekend everyone".
I think that’s a good note to end on.
If I ever do find Goldie, I’ll update this episode with that news, 
But for now, thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.
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