Sonoma County volunteers reunite cats with their owners after Tubbs fire

On a bright early morning last month, a construction crew busy rebuilding homes in Coffey Park happened to spot a small tortoiseshell cat moving across an open lot. They’ve spotted such cats before - lost pets who somehow managed to escape and survive the Tubbs fire, and have been eking out an existence in the decimated neighborhood ever since. And like before, the workers reported this one.

Becky Basque, a volunteer with Sonoma & Napa Fires Pet Rescue and Reunification, arranged her team to set up a night vision camera near the area to first confirm the sighting was real, and then to lure the kitty into a rescue cage with mackerel. It worked. The small female was taken to Forgotten Felines, a nonprofit Sonoma County group that focuses on stray, lost or feral cats. Their examination discovered tell-tale burn scars, a sure sign the cat was a neighborhood survivor.

Nearly two years after flames leveled the Santa Rosa neighborhood, Basque and a small army of volunteers with the pet rescue group are still locating and reuniting “fire cats” like this one with their owners.

As was discovered after the October 2017 wildfires, when residents flee their homes for safety, their pets don’t always make it out with them. Attempting to round up loose pets outdoors while fleeing a fire on extremely short notice proved for many to be impossible. Some dogs and cats, startled by the commotion or smoke, hid or simply fled.

Other times, animal shelters and volunteers report, as in the 2017 Tubbs fire, residents locked their cats and dogs in the house, expecting to shortly return, never imagining the evacuation would last for days, or that the fires would reach their neighborhood.

Many of these fire victims just assumed their four-legged companions were lost, according to Ellen Johnson, co-founder and volunteer with Sonoma & Napa Fires Pet Rescue and Reunification. But it turns out, with surprising frequency, that’s not the case. Cats in particular, she says, are surprisingly skilled at finding ways to escape.

Johnson knows, because she and their team of volunteers have personally located and rescued 300-400 lost pets in Sonoma County from the ashes of Larkfield, Mark West, Riebli, Coffey Park and Fountaingrove, so far. The pets find shelter in storm drains, chimneys, creek beds, or learn to survive in the wild.

Her goal? To reunite these “fire cats” with their owners if she can.

Reconnecting people with their rescued pet is a deeply emotional experience, with smiles and tears and joy, Becky noted, especially for families and seniors who’ve lost everything else in their home. “That’s what I do this for,” Johnson said.

It’s a commitment that keeps the group busy, according to Basque. In addition to the Tubbs fire, Johnson, Basque, and other volunteers and groups have recently been searching for and rescuing pets from the Camp and Paradise fires further north.

The hardest part of their effort, Johnson said, is matching the rescued pets with their owners. Many have just assumed the worst, or stop looking after a few weeks.

And after the Paradise fire in particular, many residents were forced to move out of the area, even out of state.

Even when a cat is rescued, it takes keen eyes and practice to match animals who may have lost weight, whose fur may have been scorched by fire or soiled after living wild for months. They may no longer be recognizable as the house pets they once were.

The process her group follows, Johnson said, is deliberate and born from experience in the field. They have online “admin” volunteers, some from states as far away as Tennessee, who manage a constantly updated database of found animals with IDs that include information like scars, coloration, sex, where they were found and where they’re currently being housed.

The group posts this information on their Facebook site and networks with other groups to try and track down people searching for pets.

Because cats usually hide during the day, emerging to find food at night, sometimes days or weeks go by before the kitty can be enticed and rescued by trapper volunteers. Once caught, the felines are examined and treated, and distributed to volunteers, foster homes and shelters to be housed as long as needed. Then expert “matchers” begin the process of comparing rescue cats with the hundreds of “lost” photos posted by people searching.

Amazingly, this patience pays off. One rescued cat they nicknamed Roger, with big yellow eyes, dark short fur and a sliver streak, was caught in March after escaping the Paradise fire. For months he’s been moved from shelter to shelter. Then, just this week, Ed (his real name) was joyfully reunited with Kelsey Miller and her family, who’ve been looking for their three cats since the fire.

Another fire cat ended up in a shelter near Solano. The search for her owner was stalled until Johnson happened to notice a photo of the cat’s paw, which tended to turn slightly in. She recalled seeing the same feature on an owner’s “lost” post, and made the call. But the owner wasn’t sure it was hers. Volunteers picked the elderly woman up - she had no transportation - drove her to Vallejo, where the two recognized each other and were reunited.

Johnson encourages people not to give up hope or assume their pets are lost forever. She tells the story of Tiger Lily, a longhair 14-year-old cat, who managed to survive being trapped inside her house when the Tubbs fire swept through and destroyed it. Incredibly, 134 days later she was found and trapped just three lots away. Finally, her photo was matched, and she rejoined her amazed and grateful family.

Johnson has advice to share with pet owners, and especially those with cats. Wildfires are likely to be a part of our California future, she said, so it’s best to take a few simple steps to prepare - just in case.

First, she recommends having a carrier for every cat, and practice getting kitty into it. An alarmed cat will bolt through any open door or open car window, if not secured. She also recommends owners keep a week’s worth of cat supplies on hand, because after a fire, finding litter or boxes is next to impossible. If you have to evacuate, start by putting the cat in a closed room with the door shut first, and make them the last thing you put in the car. If they are freely roaming in the house while you collect and load up your evacuation items, you risk having them bolt outside where they can’t be found. And if your cat is loose in the car, do not roll down the window - that’s a lesson from many who lost their pets driving away. Finally, take the time, she said, to have your pet microchipped, and yearly have vet records updated, so your pet can be tracked down and reunited.