Finding missing pets a big job after tornado

The back of the SPCA van was full of cat food and dog food, beds and bowls and litter, and the front contained Sharon Adams and Dana Goheen, as if anything could contain them, on a mission of mercy.

They were talking about swans. A swan was missing from somewhere, and the SPCA knew what had happened to it, but the man who had called to report it failed to leave a name or number, so although Goheen had called 150 numbers back, they hadn’t found him to say that his swan had been hit by a car.

“You know, they bond for life,” said Adams, executive director of the Virginia Beach Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, riding shotgun, and Goheen nodded, keeping her eyes on the road.

It was Friday morning. They were on their way to Driver, the fourth or fifth time they had been since the tornado, and Adams was hatching a plan to create disaster response teams for animals in every locality.

“We had so many calls from people who want to help,” she explained, as Goheen parked the van to leave supplies for the Driver Furry Friends.

Before the tornado hit, the Friends had lots of cats and kittens, and they had them in Harmony House Antiques, which was torn apart by the wind.

Tears were shed. But the cats were tough, and kittens showed up within a few hours. Sylvester was lured with mackerel out from under a nearby house, and Mamasita went into a humane trap next to a carrier holding her kittens. Whiskers was found hiding upstairs in her owner’s condemned house Wednesday evening, and Harmony House’s resident cat, Isabella, was coaxed out of the crumpled building that night.

“Don’t forget us,” Parker said as the van prepared to leave, as if these friends of Furry Friends would, since the Furry Friends, up until Monday, used to host the SPCA’s mobile spay/neuter van.

Adams gave her a hug.

Mike Picotte says he’s not a real religious man, but as he drove into Burnetts Mill after the storm, he said, “God, I don’t really care what stuff I lose, just let the pets be OK.”

His were, but he saw a big Rottweiler running loose. It was scared, and he was scared, but mostly he was scared it would bite someone and be shot.

“Hey, buddy,” Picotte said, and the dog jumped into his truck and sat breathing down his neck, while he tried not to think about how big it was. His dad told him to let the dog go. A friend told him he didn’t need that problem. But his sister told him he did the right thing, so he put up signs and soon the owner called.

“He’s single,” Picotte said. “This dog is his baby. He thought he’d never see him again.”

Adams and Goheen found Kim Martino around 11 a.m., at her home on Hillpoint Road.

Martino was missing Mary, a grayish whitish declawed house cat, who was on the screened-in porch when the storm came through.

“Could Mary have been blown out?” Adams asked, climbing down a bank to look in a debris-filled waterway.

“I guess there’s a very strong possibility,” Martino said.

“So you have looked in here? Looked in that empty house? It seems like they’d run and run, but they don’t. Dogs do, but not cats.”

Adams peered under the porch, peered under the neighbor’s porch, promised to bring back a trap.

“Bless your heart,” she said to Martino, and gave her a hug.

“This is just not cat territory,” Adams said as the van cruised past piles of splintered wood and sodden furnishings. She flagged down a woman in a yard, asked about lost pets, and the woman pointed across the golf course, so Adams abandoned the van and hoofed it toward a house – or rather, a foundation where a house used to stand – where Calvin the cat was missing.

“Well, let’s see,” Adams said, surveying the area with hands on her hips. “If I were a cat …”

She stepped carefully past piles of debris. “They’re gonna go to an open space,” she said. “They’re not gonna hide under this. They may be dead under this. But it’s fight or flight. There’s nothing to fight. So they flee.”

Brian Thiede said that Hobbes, his orange tabby, had shown up at a house far down the street, in the direction that the tornado had gone, but no one could catch him. On Thursday, Hobbes had been found hiding in the garage next door, as close to home as he could get with his own home in splinters. Calvin was not with him.

“Big? Fat? Little? Skinny?” Adams asked, making notes. “How old ?” Little gray tabby, white tip on tail, 2 years old. Skittish.

How else can we help? Adams asked, and Thiede said finding the cat would be best.

“I think I need to give you a hug,” Adams said.

Suffolk Animal Control brought 44 pets out of Burnetts Mill after the tornado, and an unknown number out of Hillpoint Farms. The Martino family’s frog died, but the only other known fatality was Rocky, a dog caught in the collapse of the Suffolk Variety Store.

Adams and Goheen drove to the Suffolk Lowe’s, paid $115 for two live traps, assembled them in the back of the van, bought 12 cans of Fancy Feast at Food Lion, and went back to Hillpoint Farms.

“Ooh, a ladybug,” Adams said, pointing to an insect sitting on the windshield. “It’s good luck.”

Goheen suggested that Martino put the trap under the wooden porch, then Adams suggested she put it right by the door up on the porch, and they agreed that she try it in one spot for two days before moving it. You have my numbers, Adams said, and decided that this time they should drive around to the Thiedes’ lot because the trap wasn’t exactly lightweight.

Brian’s wife, Emily, was equally worried about Calvin.

“He’s a big ol’ scaredy-cat,” she said, although Brian had said he was little and skinny, but Adams knew just what she meant.

Emily clung to the fact that a dead cat had not yet turned up. “I like to think that if Hobbes made his way back here, Calvin can, too,” she said, and accepted the trap.

Adams gave her the drill: check the trap in the morning, don’t set it if you can’t check it, then stopped and asked Emily why, having lost her house and possessions, she wasn’t crying.

“All I wanted was to find something, and I found one cat,” Emily replied. “At this point, I got half my heart back.”

Adams and Goheen spent a couple more hours in Suffolk, finding a new location for the SPCA mobile spay/neuter van to stop, since the usual location in Driver had been blown pretty near off the map. They nipped through a fast-food drive-in, made cell phone calls, headed back to Virginia Beach.

“You know,” Adams mused, as they drove out of Suffolk, “if we got just one of those cats, I would be happy.”

Goheen looked over at her and, at that moment, if she hadn’t been driving the van, Adams probably would have gotten a hug.

Staff writers Dave Forster and Denise Batts contributed to this report.

Diane Tennant, (757) 446-2478, diane.tennant@pilotonline.com