Dee Dee Dudley's heart broke Feb. 6, when Carrie, her longhair orange tabby, jumped from her arms in front of her son's new apartment complex in Alexandria.
The cat was hundreds of miles from her Blacksburg home, where she doesn't go out. Dudley had taken her on the drive to Northern Virginia to keep her company as she helped her son move into Parkfairfax.
A recent flier from pet detective Carl Washington, who said he found 85 pets last year. There are, of course, no guarantees.
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"She doesn't know where to go back to," said Dudley, an administrative assistant at Virginia Tech who rescued Carrie from a culvert four years ago. Dudley broke down in tears, as she said she has almost every day for nearly three weeks.
When Carrie could not be found, a neighbor in Parkfairfax suggested a call to Carl Washington, pet detective.
"I'm telling Mrs. Dudley what to do," Washington said recently from his home in Augusta, Ga., where he relocated several years ago after 24 years in Falls Church. "Cats don't give up on life very easily. They eat bugs."
Washington e-mailed to Dudley tips on how to write a flier with details about Carrie and where to post it -- in high-traffic areas such as parking lots, pet stores, shelters and anywhere near Parkfairfax where people walk and might stop to look at a photograph of the cat. Dudley was printing 500 color posters recently before heading to Alexandria.
Millions of cats and dogs in the country are reported missing every year, and now an industry is slowly growing to help track them down.
Washington, raised in the District, was a house painter by profession and dog trainer by hobby nine years ago when his neighbors in Falls Church lost their cat, a diabetic in need of daily insulin injections. His poodle tracked the cat down in nearby woods.
"In 20 minutes, I told myself, I'm in the wrong business," Washington said.
He now travels across the country for on-the-ground cases and works by phone and e-mail on others such as Carrie's. Dudley paid $60 for an initial consultation and advice. Prices go up from there.
Washington returns to Northern Virginia about three days a month. He said he found 85 pets last year. There are, of course, no guarantees.
Karen Brown understands that and knows she must expect the worst, that Neuman, her family's 3-year-old Labrador-Irish setter mix, might never turn up.
Neuman was with her on a golf course in Sterling, where he had run free so many times, when he took off Jan. 31.
"I had 15 people out until 2 in the morning looking for him," Brown said. It was the first of several fruitless searches.
