Cobb >> Ginger doesn’t mind being an indoor cat these days. After almost five months apart, she was recently reunited with her owner Chris Brokaw who says the cat is a lot cuddlier too.
The 3-year-old black and gray tabby was one of countless pets lost in the wake of September’s Valley fire.
On Super Bowl Sunday, “everyone was watching,” Brokaw said, but it wasn’t the game he was referring to, it was a trap near a home with a cat feeding station set up by Cobb Cat Rescue volunteers.
By then he’d already given up hope of ever finding Ginger, but found out through Facebook that a cat who fit her description had been frequenting the station, roughly 3 miles from where Brokaw’s home, destroyed by the blaze along with the rest of his neighborhood, once stood.
Though the Panthers ultimately lost the big game, Brokaw still celebrated a feline victory when the cat believed to be Ginger was finally captured that night.
“I ran right over there and sure enough it was unmistakably my cat,” he said.
Now that Ginger is back, Brokaw said she lets him pet her for longer periods of time, and though she was once a “squeaker” with hardly any voice she now has full throated meow.
Jennifer Tenneson of Middletown Animal Hospital said personality changes in a cat who’s been separated or experienced trauma are common. Adding that she’d be more surprised if Ginger didn’t act differently.
“Any changes in a cat’s environment can cause stress,” she said. “A lot can act a little different, freaked out a little while.”
Ginger’s more affectionate nature isn’t as common though, Tenneson said more often cats become withdrawn. A cat’s attachment to the owner, however, can play a major role in how he or she reacts. The new found closeness between Brokaw and Ginger highlights pair’s bond before being separated.
Finding Facebook
Brokaw wasn’t a member of Facebook before the fire, and it was the cat rescue efforts that prompted him to join the social networking site, which he now calls an “invaluable tool.”
Volunteers have used Facebook as a resource to connect with pet owners, posting on various pages with thousands of members created to reunite them with their animals lost after the fire. There’s The Valley Forest Fire Lost And Found Pets Group, Valley Fire — Lake County Lost or Found Pets and Valley Fire Pet Find where Cobb Cat Rescue volunteers have posted updates about their efforts including photos of cats they have seen or trapped.
To the rescue
Led by Haji Warf, the Cobb Cat Rescue team consists of about a dozen people who have gone out on an almost daily basis to try and locate cats lost after the Valley fire.
At the peak of their work volunteers had about 24 traps set out in the most devastated areas. Warf said they have captured about 30 cats, which they’ve taken to Wasson Memorial Clinic for checkups and hopefully a reunion with their owners.
Brokaw saw a Cobb Cat Rescue flyer at a coffee shop and decided to join the volunteers and Facebook, “without any expectations of catching my cat,” he said. “I just had to participate in the greater effort of cat trapping.”
He recalls his first outing with the group. It was around dusk when they set out to find lost pets.
“The very first day we started catching cats,” Brokaw said. “The first experience was just a great feeling, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t my cat.”
In the days and weeks after the fire, Warf and volunteers were out hours during the day and well into the night trying to safely capture cats, as many as five in one outing. Warf, an Upper Lake resident, could count on her fingers how many times she’d been on Cobb Mountain before the fire. Now, she knows parts of it like the back of her hand.
Volunteers will continue to watch and man the feeding stations until April, when the temporary suspension of a county ordinance, granted by the board of supervisors in October, that forbids feeding community cats will end.
Though things have slowed down since the group formed after the fire, Cobb Cat Rescue still has seven traps out and four feeding stations at volunteers’ homes, where they can be regularly monitored.
“People are still desperate,” Warf said. “It’s five months later and people are still looking for their cats.”
Brokaw believes his experience should give other people hope their cats are still out there in the wild, and that a reunion is still possible thanks to dedicated volunteers.
“My cat being returned was a testament to community and technology,” he said. “Without a tight knit community and technology, I wouldn’t have had my cat back. Facebook is great in that respect.”
To get in contact with a volunteer email cobbcatrescue@gmail.com.
