One evening late last year, Catherine Murray of Aptos, Calif., put down dinner for her 10-year-old cat, Tony, and immediately began to worry when he didn’t respond to her calls. In fact, the house seemed unusually empty. There had been workmen there that day, so she began searching the house and the yard, but Tony was nowhere in sight.

Murray called pet detective Kat Albrecht of Pet Hunters International, headquartered in Clovis, Calif. Albrecht brought Rachel, a search dog trained specifically to locate cats.

“Together, we searched every inch of Tony’s neighborhood,” Albrecht says. “Once Rachel had determined that Tony was not trapped, injured or deceased within his territory, it was obvious that he was no longer in the immediate area.”

Tony had a history of climbing into cars, so Murray checked with the contractor, who had seen no sign of the missing cat. Murray asked to check the van herself, and the contractor agreed.

**For the full article, pick up the June 2007 issue of CAT FANCY.**

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