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Lost Cat, Lost Heart
(Courtesy Maxine Hillary)
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She named him Mugoddai, a word in a Guam island language that translates roughly as the gaga feeling you get when you see a baby or a kitten, and they became inseparable.
Mugoddai stayed with her through several moves, from Guam to Arlington County and eventually to Takoma Park in 2003. On Dec. 11, after keeping him indoors for their first two weeks in a basement apartment near Sligo Creek, she took Mugoddai out for a test walk in the yard.
"He was right next to me," she said. "Some traffic went by and spooked him. He ran to the back yard. I haven't seen him since."
Hillary was devastated. She lost eight pounds in the first week. A two-day snowstorm moved in, but she wandered the neighborhood day and night. She slapped up a few posters but found the process frustrating.
"As much as we talk about spaying, neutering and vaccinating our pets, we need to talk about what to do when they go missing," said Hillary, who has become an advocate for pet identification programs. "My vet would push toothpaste for cats, but they didn't have a microchip machine."
Then she got methodical. With help from friends, she began knocking on doors and put more than 1,000 flyers in neighborhood mailboxes. She offered a reward, pinned cards on bulletin boards, posted notices to local e-mail group lists. She blanketed telephone poles as far as five miles from her apartment.
And she followed every tip. When a black cat was sighted near a storm drain a few blocks away, she parked her car and settled in for a long surveillance.
"I sat there in the snow with a cup of coffee for several hours until I saw the cat," Hillary said. "It wasn't Mugoddai."
She placed several newspaper ads, she said, that prompted the "con men and weirdos" to emerge.
The first was a pet detective (and part-time bounty hunter), who promised results.
"He came out with his truck and his dogs," Hillary said. "He charged me a thousand dollars, and told me my cat had gone over the fence in the back yard."
She paid another, Sherlock Bones, $250 for the same result.
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