WH Straywatch Good News and Helpful Tips

From Westover Hills Straywatch;
We’re happy to report that “Swizzle” the cat has been found, safe and sound. Thank you to all who responded with leads and tips.

If your pet goes missing, there are several things you can and should do immediately:

• Go out looking for your pets: talk to people whom you see out and about and ask them to spread the word about the missing pet. Ask neighbors to check their sheds, crawl spaces, and sewers, especially for missing cats.
• Put up signs giving basic information about the pet and your contact information.
• Call the City Animal Care and Control Department (646-5573) to report the missing pet, and check with Animal Control periodically to ask about found animals (don’t leave it entirely to others to make the connections).
• Contact us (Straywatch) as soon as possible to put out an alert to the neighborhood email list. John
  jmcoski@cavtel.net or 233-0705.
• Get the alert (directly or through StrayWatch) to the Hills and Heights blog (www.Hillsandheights.org), which serves several contiguous southside neighborhoods.

The most effective measures you can take are, of course, preventive:

• Be sure that your pet has the good ol’ basic, a collar and tags. Tattoos and microchips are good precautions, but many well-meaning people who find lost pets may not think to check for tattoos or chips and others will not want to go to the trouble of taking a lost animal somewhere to check for chips.
• Even primarily or exclusively indoor pets should have collars and tags. Untagged indoor pets that get out are the most difficult to identify and find.
• Have a manageable-sized digital image of your pet available for lost pet signs and to distribute through Straywatch and Hills and Heights.
• Provide these digital images to StrayWatch now – when your pet is not missing – and fill out information forms (printed in a past issue of the Rag or available upon request as a Word file attachment) to facilitate distribution of information in case of an emergency.