PET DETECTIVES
Meet the detection dog who sniffs out missing pet cats! Beena Hammond tells the incredible story.
Meet the dog who sniffs out lost cats!
People said it couldn’t but done, but I knew it could.
Cats are contrary creatures. They come and go as they please. But when they do more of the disappearing act than we’re comfortable with, it could be time to call in the experts. There are professionals who can help and perhaps one of the most dynamic detecting duos in the country is agency UK Pet Detectives. What’s surprising about their untarnished success record is that one half of this cat-detecting duo is actually a dog!
Molly, a spaniel, and her owner Colin Butcher, a former Surrey police detective inspector, form a formidable team. In the past three years, the team have managed to recover around 200 cats.
STARTING OUT
When Colin first started in 2003, he helped to close down illegal dog breeders and fake rescue centres for dogs but began to get more and more calls about missing cats. In his time, however, he has located anything from missing llamas to ravens. He’s also helped to solve long standing kitty crimes.
“We worked with the Met Police and provided evidence that led to the closure of the investigation around the Croydon Cat Killer,” says Colin. “It turned out to be a myth. Most of the cats were victims of road accidents before their bodies were torn apart by local foxes.”
As things continued to grow, more than half the calls Colin was getting were about missing cats — so he knew he needed some expert help. In Germany, dogs are trained to scent match items criminals drop at the scene. They can then pick them out in a line-up — something permissible as evidence. It led Colin to thinking why the same couldn’t be done for finding cats. He found Molly, who was dumped on the listing site Gumtree when she was just 18 months old, and got to work training his puppy.
“People said it couldn’t be done, but I knew it could,” says Colin. “She’s a clever dog and is the world’s only air sniffing dog who can scent match a cat — and she’s never wrong.”
DYNAMIC DUO
Together they’ve recovered cats from some pretty curious locations including locked inside a treehouse, the pump room of a swimming pool, school toilets over half term break, inside a half-finished cavity wall, and even in a wall behind a cooker belonging to a top chef.
“It was surreal hearing a meowing coming from inside a wall,” says Colin. “Last year, we rescued a kitten belonging to an Italian chef that was behind the cooker all along.
“We’ve even had to dismantle a whole car engine — the cat had wedged itself stuck in an airflow vent.”
When Molly helped find a pet of a family who decided to take a last-minute trip to Holland, it became a landmark moment. “The cat escaped from a cattery,” explains Colin. “Cats always head in the direction of home, so that’s where we struck out. With Molly’s incredible sense of smell, we found the cat more than a quarter of a mile away hiding in a tractor shed on a farm in Devil’s Dyke, near Brighton. That cat became her 100th find. ”The feline escapologist’s name? Houdini, of course.
Towards the end of last summer, Colin and Molly even ended up scaling down seven flights of scaffolding — complete with a hard hat and high-vis jacket, at least for Colin. “We had to trace the missing cat’s every move right down to the bottom using ladders. We found her the same day hiding in a recycling bay below.”
AN ART
Cats don’t usually migrate very far explains Colin
(Houdini was unusual!). A cat will tend to navigate back to where home is based. In a wild situation, a cat has a very wide territory and is able to stay in it without trespassing on another’s territory, therefore keeping out of fights. A lot of experts believe that cats have the ability to use the stars to navigate or even magnetic fields so they can feel which direction is home says Colin.
“Cats also mark their territories,” he adds. “They have a gland in the top of their mouth they use to understand scent messages called pheromones. They can smell other cats in season and they can pick up on scent signatures that humans can’t. They help them to know what’s going on.”
“They also have another gland in their paws — a lot of people think that when a cat scratches it’s doing so just to sharpen its claws.The reason they do that is when they pull free, they are pushing the scent from their paws into the claw marks they’ve made. They’re effectively saying to other cats: ‘this is how tall I am, and this is how strong I am’.”
Although it’s not an exact science, Colin says the more you understand about cat behaviour, the better chance you’ve got of finding them.
“When you’re actually working to find cats, we strike out in a direction that would take us towards the cat’s home in the belief that the cat’s gone in the same direction. That’s how we found Houdini, and that happens far too many times for it to be a coincidence — we nearly always get it right.”
“Molly is able to use scent match discrimination for individual cats. She’s able to detect the same scent from a cat’s brush, bedding, or whatever, and search for just that cat and ignore the scent of all other cats. She always comes up trumps and we’ve tested it hundreds and hundreds of times, and she never gets it wrong. She just does what her nose tells her.
OWNER ADVICE
Colin’s advice to owners with missing cats is not to panic. “They’re brilliant at surviving. Cats don’t like change so they tend to go somewhere to escape the sensory overload.” He says owners are usually left bereft that their missing cat is outside somewhere in the cold, but he has some words of reassurance.
“If cats were perishing because of hunger in the cold, we’d be tripping over their bodies all over the place,” he says. “The best thing to do is to engage your local community. Put posters up. Talk to your neighbours, check their homes, sheds, and gardens.”
If that doesn’t work, it might be time to call in the
Pet Detectives.