Missing Pet Partnership founder Kat Albrecht calls Bebe?s story Peepless in Seattle because the skittish missing cat was quietly hiding a stone?s throw from where he?d gone missing. Thanks to effective methods and perseverance Bebe was finally captured and will return to his family.

Missing Pet Partnership, a national nonprofit based in Federal Way, Washington, used a high-tech surveillance camera and low-tech can of cat food to recover a lost cat named ?Bebe? who ended up hiding out in a Tacoma neighborhood for just over four months.

On November 4, 2011, Bebe?s family was traveling through Seattle on their way to a new home in Half Moon Bay, California when they stopped late at night at the Motel Six at 1811 S. 76th Street, Tacoma.

When they opened the cat carrier for a moment, Bebe bolted into the dark night. He was last seen running into juniper bushes at a nearby corner house. Missing Pet Partnership volunteers responded and used various tools and techniques to try and find Bebe. Volunteers knew that Bebe, who has a very skittish temperament, would likely be hiding near the escape point so they focused their recovery efforts there.

They used a technique that involved setting up a ?feeding station? with piles of cat food along with digital wildlife cameras that snapped pictures and videos of every cat (and raccoon) that came to eat the food.

Weeks turned into months but there was no sign of Bebe.

In spite of setbacks like New Years Eve fireworks, three snowstorms, a zealous neighborhood watch group who torn down Bebe posters, and the theft of one of MPP?s cameras, three MPP volunteers continued the effort and never lost hope!

Finally, on March 8, 2012 Bebe was captured on camera. The most amazing aspect is that Bebe was hiding out just one house away from the original escape point. Bebe was humanely captured in a cat trap the following day and was placed in lockdown, for his own safety, inside a room belonging to a Missing Pet Partnership volunteer in Federal Way. Bebe was examined and given a health certificate for his planned flight home. He will be accompanied by MPP volunteers, and will fly in-cabin, not in cargo.

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Footage of Bebe, a cat missing 4 months finally captured on camera by Missing Pet Partnership. He was captured in a humane trap just hours after this footage was taken.

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Here?s MMP founder Kat Albrect?s telling of the story, Bebe: Peepless in Seattle

Every once in awhile, we work an amazing investigation here at Missing Pet Partnership. The ?Bebe Case? is certainly shaping up to be one of those cases and one we?ll use in our program to train volunteer pet detectives nationwide. This cat did what most panicked cats do?they hide in silence (thus the ?peepless in Seattle? title). We just did NOT expect that he?d remain invisible for so long. And while we captured Bebe, we are still working to get him HOME where he belongs! Here?s the scoop:

On November 4, 2011, the grandmother of Bebe-the-tabby cat was transporting him from northern Washington to live with his mother, Corri, who lives in Half Moon Bay (San Francisco), CA. During a late night stop at a Motel 6 in Tacoma, grandmother opened up Bebe?s carrier and he bolted! He was last seen running into the juniper bushes of a house in a residential area next to the motel on the S/W corner of S. 76th Street and S. Wilkenson Street. The grandmother searched, but she could not find Bebe. She was forced to continue with her move to California, heartbroken. Her daughter Corri called Missing Pet Partnership on November 8th and asked for our help. In most cases, we have a cat owner here in our town who we work side by side to help them search for their missing cat. But in this case, if our volunteers did not search for and find Bebe, we knew he would end up being absorbed into the feral/stray cat population.

It just so happened that when Corri called, MPP had a producer in town who was here to film our searches in order to develop a training video. The Bebe investigation seemed like a compelling yet EASY case to work because from the very beginning, we believed that Bebe was likely still hiding in the immediate area. That?s because after interviewing Corri, we determined that Bebe is a ?Cautious Cat? and these cats typically hide in silence near the escape point and just do not travel far. We knew that with a little bit of time, some food, a wildlife camera, and then a humane trap, we could catch him and get him back home. HA!

So, Missing Pet Partnership responded with a group of volunteers and conducted an intersection alert, tagged our cars, and posted giant neon posters. We filmed all of this in anticipation of finding Bebe within a few days, perhaps a few weeks. In fact, in the case of Smokey, the other missing cat we searched for, we captured him in a humane trap one week after his escape (on Thanksgiving Day!).

But as the days turned into weeks, there was NO sign of Bebe. We put up feeding stations and wildlife cameras but NOTHING. We thought we had a cat that looked like him on camera in mid December, but it was not him. As January and February rolled around, I have to confess that I was losing hope because in all of that time we did not have one single confirmed sighting. But thankfully we had three committed volunteers (Chris Duvall, Annette Lanker, and Bob) who continued to put up signs, put out food, and check the wildlife camera (set up in the juniper bushes at a vacant house on the S/E corner of 76th & Wilkinson) several days a week.

Then, quite unexpectedly, Chris Duvall called me on March 8, 2012 to tell me, ?Kat, I have a gray tabby that we caught on camera. I think it could be Bebe.? Well, as you probably guessed, I was skeptical. In spite of the fact that I continually PREACH to pet owners to ?not lose hope? I had, in fact, lost hope! But as Chris and I examined the photos and compared the patterns of stripes and the patterns of white on the paws chest of the cat in the photo, we had no doubt in our minds that the cat caught on camera WAS BEBE!

We immediately set in motion plans to set up a drop trap (at the vacant house) and to capture Bebe during a surveillance operation. We went out and set up the drop trap at the vacant house, set up the wildlife camera, and removed all food from the area. We wanted to make certain Bebe would go under the drop trap before we set up the operation. The next day, we pulled the camera and ?wah lah?, there was Bebe going under our drop trap!

Footage from Missing Pet Partnership?s digital wildlife camera placed at the drop trap (set in bushes at vacant house) capturing Bebe, a skittish cat who escaped his carrier in Nov 2011 and was finally caught on camera 4 months later at a feeding station (because volunteers KNEW he would not travel far and was likely hiding and living like a ?feral? cat in that neighborhood). Bebe was humanely trapped the next day.

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So, get this, we go out there on Saturday (March 10th) in the afternoon just to set up our cameras and plan everything for the capture that we already had volunteers signed up to help with ON SUNDAY when suddenly someone said, ?There he is!? Sure enough, Bebe was sitting across the street (at the house on the N/E corner of 76th & Wilkinson) grooming himself! We captured it on video, and it?s posted on YouTube here. Of course, when we moved, Bebe darted. So I snuck around the other side of the house and sure enough, he was right there. Bebe froze and when I took a step forward, he darted directly towards the hole and went under the house! We snapped a picture of the hidey-hole so that you could see the accumulation of cat hair fibers.

We call this ?high probability evidence? that we train pet detectives to look for when searching for a missing cat. It signifies this location (entrance under this house) is an entrance/exit point for a cat who repeatedly goes in and out from that space. We?d found Bebe?s new home?and it was just across the street from where he?d escaped 4 months before! Thankfully, the home owners (Brenda and her son Trey) were Bebe fans and agreed to let us set up our cameras and trap and operation in their yard, so we jumped into action. We moved the drop trap from the vacant house and set it up right outside the hidey-hole, set up a nanny camera right by the trap, ran an extension cord and hooked it to a TV monitor in a gazebo on the other side of the house, huddled up in silence and prepared to catch a cat. We taped a quick ?set up? piece (watch on YouTube) with me sitting next to the TV monitor (which shows the drop trap) for the training video.

What happened next was completely unexpected (and a bit comical). Bebe came out of the hole, walked up to the drop trap but did not stay under it long enough, and then sauntered calmly within ten feet of us, froze in place, and stood there staring at six pet detectives who were trying to stay still and not breath! Needless to say, Bebe bolted and ran back under the house! It was dark already and we were unprepared to conduct a full stakeout, so after an hour of waiting with no cat, we decided that we?d continue the drop trap operation the next night as originally scheduled. But in the off chance that Bebe might go into a normal humane trap, we set one up and baited it with food. Well, we should?ve known that Bebe is just not your typical cat. Ten minutes after we all left, Bebe went into the humane trap! But, true to form with all our other camera malfunctions, we did not capture the actual capture on video! Instead, the wildlife camera recorded Bebe for 30 seconds as he ate food outside of the trap (watch here), then it kicked into the 60 second delay (which was during the point Bebe was captured and what we WANTED to get on video), and then it kicked in to record Bebe already in the trap. So much for capturing it on camera for a training video! I did shoot some video AFTER Bebe for the training video which you can watch here.

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Bebe inside the trap.

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Throughout this investigation, we encountered the following obstacles: a very pregnant owner who lived in California and could not come search for her own cat, a cat that was displaced in known coyote territory, freezing temperatures that included three snow storms, New Years Eve fireworks, apathetic employees of nearby businesses (who refused to let us post signs), the theft of one of our digital wildlife cameras, one crabby neighbor who clearly hated our signs (and cats), a group of over zealous neighborhood watch volunteers who thought our posters were illegal (they were not) and ripped them down, a failed drop trap operation due to Bebe being smarter than our rescuers, flubbed up filming due to equipment failures, and now a lack of funds to get Bebe back home.

To give you perspective on the distance that Bebe traveled during the 4 months that he was ?lost,? I snapped a photo (below) from the exact spot where Bebe escaped (which was on S. 76th Street

You can see an intersection ahead (with a round-about-curby-thing in the middle to slow speeders and trip up drunk drivers). Bebe was last seen running into the bushes of the house on the right side of this photo by that telephone pole, he was captured on camera at the vacant house right behind that maroon van, and we was living under that split level green house (and was captured in the trap there) on the opposite corner. Focusing your search CLOSE to the escape point, using the proper tools, and having hope are key to recovering a skittish lost cat!

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Bebe Prepares to fly home.
After receiving donations, contacting Pilots and Paws, and arranging for three volunteers to fly on Alaska Airways today, March 25, the plan to return Bebe home was delayed due to overbooking in the flight. MPP expects to be able to fly to San Jose in early April.

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Missing Pet Partnership was founded in 2001 by Kat Albrecht, a former police officer-turned-pet detective. Missing Pet Partnership volunteers conduct physical searches for lost pets throughout the Puget Sound area using search dogs, high-tech equipment, surveillance cameras, and CSI-like techniques. If you would like to become a volunteer with Missing Pet Partnership please visit the volunteer page at their website.

Source: http://www.lifewithcats.tv/2012/03/25/bebes-rescue-pet-detectives-capture-shy-missing-cat-after-4-months/

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