By Brian M. Boyce
TERRE HAUTE — And on top of it all, they still can’t find Katie.
Virginia and Bob Noyd carted Charlie, their pet cat, in a little red wagon around the Cracker Barrel parking lot Wednesday, hoping his sister would recognize his scent and come back to the family.
The Noyds have been trying to reunite the two sibling felines from different litters since Katie’s disappearance June 13, 2008.
Originally from Erie, Pa., the Noyds sold their home there last year to move to a retirement community in Arizona near Virginia’s sister.
En route to Arizona, the couple stopped in Terre Haute — just after after the community was ravaged by a flood — and stayed at the Econo Lodge on Margaret Avenue. While there, their 9-year-old calico cat, Katie, managed to escape from their room through an opening beneath the bathroom vanity, which led into the hotel’s crawl space.
The Noyds stayed an extra day searching for their pet, but to no avail. The Terre Haute Humane Society, while helpful, could not participate in the search due to the number of stranded animals left from that weekend’s flood, Virginia said.
But over the last year, Virginia has maintained contact with the local humane society, as well as with employees at the Econo Lodge and surrounding hotels, hoping Katie would turn up.
“We just want our cat back,” a sweat-soaked Virginia said, showing off pictures of Katie while standing in the Cracker Barrel parking lot.
As fate would have it, the retirement community did not agree with the Noyds, and so it was that only 11 months after moving to Arizona, the couple decided to sell their new home and move back to Erie.
“Going out there on vacation is one thing,” said Virginia, a federal government retiree. “But living out there month after month after month is another.”
So, with a U-Haul loaded to the hilt and an automobile-laden car carrier in tote, the couple left Arizona last week, driving up mountains in the west, through rain storms in Amarillo, Texas, and around frustrating traffic detours in St. Louis. Wednesday they were back in Terre Haute where a maintenance man at the Econo Lodge told them he’d seen Katie within the last four days.
And so the couple, undeterred by the smothering heat and humidity, renewed their search.
Virginia contacted Vicki Curts with the Spay/Neuter League, and the group received permission to place live traps outside the Cracker Barrel restaurant. The Noyds redistributed pictures and information about Katie throughout the area and began taking Charlie on wagon rides, calling out for Katie along the way.
But the Noyds’ belongings are in storage back in Erie, and they have to return the 26-foot-long U-Haul this week, something Virginia said is unlikely to occur due to the slow speed at which the vehicle is traveling. Thursday morning, they had to surrender the search and traps, she said, “only because we have 600 miles to go back to Erie.”
On top of all that, the couple still has to find a new home to buy immediately upon their return.
“My husband and I are just Average Joes,” she said of herself and Bob, a General Electric retiree.
The Noyds are embodiments of the results released earlier this from an Associated Press-Petside.com poll, showing half of all American pet owners consider their pets to be as much a part of their family as any other person in the household.
With 600 miles of their trek home still ahead, Virginia and Bob loaded Charlie and pointed their U-Haul eastward Thursday morning. They remain hopeful to be reunited one day with their missing Katie.
Info
• Anyone with information on missing cat Katie can contact the Terre Haute Humane Society at (812) 232-0293, Virginia Noyd at (602) 690-0009 or Amy Kryak at lostart@comcast.net.
Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.
