How a Pet Detective Found Missing St. Pete Cat

Chappy, a tuxedo tabby, spent a long eight days on the streets of St. Pete. With the help of a pet detective in Fort Lauderdale and a St. Pete woman trying to find a lost dog, Chappy returned home safely.

Chappy is a 6-year-old indoor cat who does not wear a collar. On the morning of Feb. 12, a gust of wind blew open the door to the house where Chappy lives. Owners Arin Greenwood and Ray Lehmann couldn’t move fast enough to grab the startled cat as he made a beeline for the door.

The couple posted flyers around the neighborhood  and searched for him for hours each day (and night) around their neighborhood. After posting on social media, people tagged Pet Detective Jamie Katz in Greenwood’s comments.

“I think 50 people must have tagged her on my Facebook posts,” Greenwood said. “Finally she reached out to me and said, ‘People keep tagging me. I can’t travel to you, but I can consult with you on the phone if you want’.”

Real-Life Ace Ventura, Pet Detective

Katz is a licensed private investigator specializing in “reuniting lost, missing, and stolen pets with their families.” In 2016, she started her own pet detective agency and traveled the country to help reunite pets with owners. In 2020, she decided to work from home in Fort Lauderdale. Now, she offers on-location and off-location services, depending on clients’ situations.

Her on-location service includes her scent-specific tracking dogs, Fletcher and Gable. The process starts with the dogs sniffing the missing pet’s collar, or a floof of hair from a brush. Starting at the point of escape, the two sniff out direction of travel. Katz then creates weatherproof, bright colored signs to post around the perimeter the dogs discovered.

In Chappy’s case, Katz provided off-location services. She curated a “lost pet” poster and suggested placement for them. She also guided them through answering phone calls as well.

“The first thing she taught us that we didn’t have nearly enough signs. They weren’t colorful enough. They weren’t big enough, and they weren’t in the right places. And they didn’t have a reward,” Lehmann said.

“Somebody can call me and I’ll go through their case and I’ll tell them this is what you need to fix,” Katz said. “They don’t even need to hire me. I don’t mind helping so they can at least get their case set up correctly.”

Where is Chappy?

With the new signs around the neighborhood, a woman texted Greenwood’s number around 1 a.m. on Feb. 20, eight days after Chappy had gone missing. While searching for her friend’s missing chihuahua, she spotted a black and white cat.

It was Chappy. He had been hiding under Greenwood’s next door neighbor’s porch.

“Now that he’s home, he’s acting like nothing ever happened,” Greenwood said.

“Sara, who found Chappy, asked us to donate it to help this dog whose family couldn’t afford her surgery,” Greenwood said. “Sara works at a vet clinic and is seeing a lot of pets whose owners are struggling to pay for vet care – who are essentially facing having to euthanize a pet if they can’t pay for the care.”