Here's To All The Lost Cats

There is always hope for missing friends. Just ask Don Moust. Last winter, was lost for eleven days.

Oak Lawn Patch sent out a breaking-news alert about the missing pooch and Don was inundated with Quint sightings. The Lost Dogs Illinois Facebook page helped too. We all followed Don’s anguished search for Quint.

After weeks of looking for Quint, who was spotted in Oak Lawn, Evergreen Park, Mt. Greenwood and St. Casmir Cemetery, Quint turned up in Oak Forest just as Don was beginning to accept that perhaps he and Quint weren’t meant to be.

In March, another reader let us know about her neighbor’s missing Chihuahua, Paco, on the Oak Lawn Patch Facebook page. Paco found himself three days later, barking at the back door of his owner, Joann Waters-Figueroa, but not before his picture and deets were blasted across the social media network.

Little is known about Paco’s whereabouts for those three days except that someone reported seeing a small brown dog running down the middle of Pulaski.

While our track record is pretty good for finding lost dogs, we never had a request for a lost cat, until we received this email from reader Cori Pohlmeier last Friday:

“I just pulled a flier off of my door about a lost cat named Boots. The cat was lost at 81st Place and I live at 92nd St. These people really must be sad to go door to door 11 blocks from home.

I remember how you helped the man with his missing dog. PS. I think you and your staff do a bang-up job!”

Enter Noel Roberts, painter of animals on glass. Noel is an artist. His personalized portraits capture the souls of pets that glance at you over time. Noel had just posted a picture of a small black-and-white cat that showed up a few weeks ago at his back door near 96th Street and Menard.

For a brief moment, Cori and I thought that perhaps we had located the missing Boots from Burbank. I called the number on the flier left on Cori’s door. I soon received a phone call from Louise, Boots’ owner.

The kitty whose picture Noel had left on our Facebook page was a petite little miss. Boots is a male tuxedo cat. His chip is current and he’s missing the tip of his left ear.

Like Don, Louise needs to work on her technology skills. I went to Burbank and retrieved Boots' flier. Boots was a feral rescued by Louise when he was five months old. Louise has other cats and they all miss him.

If you know someone who’s recently found a male tuxedo cat missing part of his ear, please take him to a vet to have his chip scanned so that he can be returned to Louise.

Getting back to the found cat on 96th Street and Menard, Mr. Gonzcy who teaches English and journalism at , offered to help Noel with any vet costs. Another reader said she’d like to adopt Noel’s foundling after having her vetted.

It turns out, however, that the cat has kids. Mama, as Noel and wife, Julie, have since named her, has been bringing her three babies by, where the Roberts have been leaving food out for Mama. Two of the kittens look suspiciously like the male cat up the block. The third is a dead ringer for Mama.

And while we’re looking for Boots, we learned of two other missing cats. Zeus, is missing from 101st Street and Kildaire Avenue. Zues is owned by Lori Morefield. He has a bent left ear.

We had another false alarm with Holly, a cuddly black-and-white kitty who is missing from Palos Heights. We thought Holly might be Noel and Julie's Mama, but Holly is fixed.

As the mother of a Schnauzer, if it were my dog that was missing, you’d have to admit me to with or without the expansion.

So let us know about your missing pets. Send us their pictures and stories. We can’t always run a breaking news alert, but we will do everything we can to help you get the word out on Oak Lawn Patch and through social media.

Get your dogs and cats chipped, too. Check out Oak Lawn Patch events because there is always a happening somewhere in the area. Here are some simple instructions to help you share your events and missing pet fliers.

I can’t say enough great things about the Lost Dogs Illinois and Lost Cats Illinois Facebook pages. They find more missing pets than not.

Meanwhile, let’s keep an eye out for Boots, Holly and Zeus. Contact Lorraine if you have information about them, and I will contact their owners, lorraine.swanson@patch.com.

They say you can judge a community by how well it treats its animals. You're okay, Oak Lawn.