Our cat escaped from his carrier at our vets which is 7 miles from our house. Very rural area. Knowing I'm already polluted/potential AOLs, would I be better doing a blind matrix overlay of the map? Or perhaps a blank sheet overlay and use the triangulation method? Could I also give myself a tasking of where the cat will be at a specific future date & time? Any help would be much appreciated at this point! Thanks.

Any e-mails send to my alternate address: bakerstreet@cfl.rr.com

Jeff Davis

Jeff--

Sorry for the delayed answer -- I just got back from a 2 week backpacking trip with the Boy Scouts in northern New Mexico, followed by an immediate turn-around back to Colorado for the SSE conference. But I'm home for a few days, so I'll take a (very belated) stab at answering your question.

First, sorry to hear about your cat -- in the several days since you posted, hopefully the incident has come to a happy conclusion. I also commend you for trying to figure out how to do this yourself -- usually when people contact me for missing pets, they want me to find the cat or dog (or goldfish? for them. In most cases I have to turn them down.

First, the most expeditious way to apply dowsing in this case is to get a map of the area no larger than the limits of where the cat could possibly be (this will take some judgment on your part, as the cat could theoretically cover quite a lot of terrain -- but in practical terms probably wouldn't). Then just dowse the area. Of course, this doesn't necessarily help the AOL problem. If you find that is problematic, go ahead with the blank sheet approach, and you could use either a matrix or triangulation. However, an alternative might be the "Zeno's paradox" approach, where you dowse which half of the map the cat is in, then which half of that space, then which half of the still smaller space, and so on.

Finally, rather than a a tasking of 'where will the cat be' you might want to phrase it 'where should I go to recover (or find) the cat?' Also, of course, the more specific on the cat's identification you can be, the better, such as 'where should I go to find our beloved Snookums,' or whatever.

Good luck!
Paul

Paul,
Thanks so much for your reply. Unfortunately, no Pepper(the cat) yet, but we haven't given up. I used both approaches. First used the aerial photos of our local county property appraiser's website, sequentially shrinking the area to search in. Then used the blank page overlaying the aerials. The difficulty lies in the fact most of the property is private and very rural. lots of wooded and swampy areas. But at least the indications I got is that he is still in the area. A very helpful lady told me of a website that has great suggestions for locating lost pets: fetch-my-pet.com. I was impressed with how much info they have, even down to how a cat will behave when lost, based on its particular personality. They give great info on how to bait an area to draw your pet in.

Again, I really appreciate the advice. Will do some more dowsing when we get back form vacation. Biggest block is my own confidence in my ability.

Jeff

Sorry Pepper hasn't turned up yet! I wish you the best of luck on this. And yes, confidence issues can get in the way sometimes -- but it's part of our (human) natures, and just has to be worked with.

Best,
Paul