Cats get lost, cats get found

Pets often go missing. Owners of missing pets then post up photographs of their animals, asking people to keep an eye out for them and report them if found. For a while now I have been photographing these lost animal notices and posting them to a Flickr album and to Facebook. I find the pictures interesting in and of themselves but I do also like to think that maybe, just maybe, sharing the photos online will help the lost animals find their way home.

Today I was waking home from work a bit later than usual along the canal near the Luas Bridge, by the Hilton, when I saw a cat nosing around. Something about the cat seemed a bit odd, like it was almost approaching people but not quite, not a behaviour I generally see in our feline friends. And it looked a bit familiar. I fumbled for my mobile phone and looked at pictures of lost cats I had posted to Facebook, and thought that this one looked rather like one I had posted last January. Could it be the same one? I hurriedly wrote down one of the numbers on the poster and rang the number, leaving a somewhat confused phone message. Then I sent a more detailed text message to the phone numbers.

I watched the cat as it prowled around in the grass beside the canal, intently eyeing the birds swimming in the water. Perhaps it was hoping to chance upon a chick or a small bird ashore, or an unwary rodent. But it did not and moved away from the water. It came close to me, seeming to neither beg for food and attention nor to exhibit any obvious fear of humans. I thought of trying to catch it, which I think would have been easy enough, but I had no idea how long it would take the owners to come back to me. It would be a bit annoying if I was holding an angry cat when a message reached me that the owners had recovered their tiddles months previously. So I watched it for a bit longer and then decided to slink home lest I be arrested as one of those shifty characters who loiters outside hotels.

And then when I was nearly home I received a text message form the owners thanking me and saying that they had recovered the cat by the hotel. Jurassic Park.

Pets - Lost and Found

An inuit panda production