Rambo the cat thrashes in a cat lure close to his dwelling in Ingram, Texas on Thursday, July 10. Rambo had been lacking for nearly every week after the catastrophic flooding in central Texas.
Kat Lonsdorf/NPR
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Kat Lonsdorf/NPR
INGRAM, TEXAS – Sherry Sweeney holds out a handful of cat meals and calls after a small tabby prowling between large, uprooted bushes.
“Right here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” she coaxes, stepping calmly and slowly. The cat spooks, darting beneath a pile of particles that was as soon as a home.
Sweeney stands in what stays of a trailer park subsequent to the Guadalupe River, fully destroyed after heavy rain final Friday precipitated the river to abruptly rise greater than 20 toes in a single day, sweeping away almost every little thing in its path for miles. No less than 120 individuals have died, and greater than 170 are lacking, in response to native authorities.
Home-owner Daniel Olivas, proper, clears particles from his dwelling that was closely broken from flash floods alongside the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, on Thursday, July 10, 2025.
Gerald Herbert/AP
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Gerald Herbert/AP
Since then, a whole bunch of residents within the catastrophe zone have reported their pets lacking to native animal shelters. Volunteers like Sweeney are out looking, hoping to reunite pets with their house owners.
At this trailer park in Ingram, properties are smashed and damaged, and vehicles have been crumpled and tossed about like toys. However Sweeney is comparatively used to this type of destruction – she’s helped discover pets within the aftermath of a number of different native floods and tornadoes.
At present, she’s right here working with Austin Pets Alive!, a nonprofit rescue that mobilizes after disasters in Texas. She drove greater than 5 hours in a single day to the positioning when she heard that a number of residents had been lacking their pets and wanted assist.
A 3-month-old pet was discovered wandering by volunteers amidst the destruction left after the catastrophic floods in central Texas.
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“I’d need somebody to do it for me,” she says, tearing up a bit. “I can not assist with the rest, however I will help with their pets.”
Sweeney focuses on capturing cats – principally utilizing metallic traps set with meals strategically positioned in places the place one has been seen – since she says they are often more durable to catch than canines.
“You already know, a canine after one thing goes on, they’re like ‘Hey, I am proper right here! Come get me!,” she says. “However a cat would not try this. A cat’s gonna conceal for days.”
That is an issue, not just for the individuals in search of them. Cats typically conceal among the many rubble, and run the chance of being damage or killed when the bulldozers are available to clear it.
Sweeney has already caught one cat – chatty, gray and fluffy, with vibrant inexperienced eyes – who meows from a close-by provider. Leaving it within the shade, she walks to the very entrance of the park, the place a house continues to be standing however badly broken. She units a lure close by after listening to that the proprietor, 71-year-old Cindy McCarthey, reported a number of of her cats lacking.
What stays of Cindy McCarthey’s dwelling, after the Fourth of July floods.
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McCarthey is inside, clearing out what she will be able to salvage. Furnishings is strewn about, dishes and plates are damaged on the ground and different belongings are badly water broken.
“I do not know the place to start out, that is simply overwhelming,” she says, handing a field of Stetson cowboy hats to her daughter-in-law Laura McCarthey outdoors.
Cindy McCarthey says she had eight cats earlier than the flood, a number of of which she rescued from the highway outdoors her home after watching individuals dump them from vehicles.
“My husband handed away final October, they usually’ve been an ideal solace to me,” she says.
Cindy McCarthey was asleep when the water began to fill her dwelling — which, for many years, had by no means even come near flooding, she says. By the point she realized what was occurring, she could not escape. So she and her cats needed to trip it out inside.
She sat on an armchair recliner in her front room, as removed from the home windows as she might get, and managed to maintain maintain of three of the cats. However the others scattered, she says.
“Bear-bear misplaced his life. He bought caught within the slats beneath my mattress,” she says. She later discovered him drowned from the rising water.
“And Rambo jumped out the bed room window when a tree went by way of it,” she says.
She says she assumed Rambo was lifeless; three others additionally had been nonetheless lacking.
Laura McCarthey says it is most likely exhausting for the misplaced pets to search out their approach dwelling, since nothing within the neighborhood is recognizable anymore.
“They go to search out their acquainted smells, they usually’re all gone due to the flood.”
Simply then, Sweeney calls from outdoors – a cat simply wandered into the lure she positioned earlier.
Cindy McCarthey’s face brightens. “Is it ginger? Lengthy hair? Which one is it?,” she calls, coming across the nook to look.
Sweeney holds up the cage. Inside, a black and gray cat thrashes round, overwhelmed.
Shelly Sweeney (proper) smiles as she reunites Cindy McCarthey (left) together with her cat Rambo on Thursday, after he ran off in the course of the catastrophic flooding in central Texas final week. Rambo had been lacking for nearly every week.
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“That is Rambo!” Cindy McCarthey exclaims, clapping. “He is alive! That is Rambo!”
Sweeney stands subsequent to the cage, beaming. “See? This is the reason I do it,” she says.
They make a plan – Rambo will go to the native shelter, Kerrville Pets Alive, the place volunteer veterinarians are checking on rescued animals. The McCartheys will choose him up later within the day.
On the shelter, Dr. Mallory Cade seems over Rambo and offers him a clear invoice of well being. Cade says she principally has seen cats are available.
“They will climb bushes and get away, so we’ll see extra cats than canines make it out. However there have completely been canines, too,” she says.
The shelter has collected a whole bunch of studies of lacking pets, making a database after which making an attempt to establish animals as they arrive in. In addition they work to establish any lifeless pets which can be discovered, hoping to carry closure to the house owners nonetheless looking.
“Proper now, we’re sort of the primary responders for animals,” says Karen Guerriero, president and co-founder of Kerrville Pets Alive. She says circumstances have been making rescue efforts harder and harmful, however there’s been a variety of demand.
“We have got livestock, wildlife, canines and cats. This can be a retirement group, so for many individuals right here, their pet is their most necessary factor,” she says.
Rambo the cat waits for his proprietor Cindy McCarthey to return choose him up after getting a full checkup from a volunteer veterinarian in Kerrville, Texas.
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Guerriero lives in Kerrville, and is aware of individuals who had been killed and others who misplaced every little thing. It has been an emotionally tough time for everybody.
“You have bought your coronary heart hurting. And so it is sort of therapeutic to have these reunions between pets and other people,” she says.
Which is why Sherry Sweeney turns round and heads proper again out, hoping to make extra of these reunions occur. Because the solar units on one other day within the catastrophe space, she continues the work: setting traps, calling for cats and ready for them to return dwelling.
