Feeding Station and Trail Camera for a Cat Displaced by a Disaster: Station Before Trap, and What a Burn or Flood Zone Changes

Put out food where you can safely and legally return to it, point a motion camera at it, and confirm your cat is visiting before you set a trap. Expect other animals to come to the food too, and expect it to take days. Before you place anything in a disaster area, ask the agency that controls the area whether you may be there. No source cited here gives a search radius, station spacing, camera height or duration for a burn scar or flooded block.

Your street does not smell like your street. The fence line the cat used as a boundary may be on the ground, the shed it hid under gone or full of water, and a checkpoint may sit at the end of the block. This page is about the one method that keeps working when the landmarks do not: a feeding station watched by a camera, set before any trap goes out, in a place you may only be allowed to visit inside a window somebody else controls.

Our post-disaster reunification workflow covers the first forty-eight hours: the animal control report, the microchip, the database filing, the tight physical search. Start there if you have not filed anything yet, because a station and a camera are slow instruments and the reports work while you sleep. This page picks up after the reports are in and the ordinary tactics have hit a landscape that broke them.

Before You Place Anything: Who Controls the Ground

In a disaster zone the access question can end the conversation, so it comes first.

Two organizations publish do-not-enter statements aimed at people searching for animals. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s pet safety fact sheet for returning to fire-affected areas says: “Do not attempt to return to disaster-affected areas until cleared to do so by local authorities.” As of August 11, 2026, Pasadena Humane’s Eaton Fire animal assistance page said not to enter burned areas to rescue or search for animals, because trained responders are on site. That is one organization’s message during one incident in one county, not a national rule, but it is aimed at exactly the reader of this page.

The agency that decides is named in the best-practices literature. NASAAEP’s Animal Search and Rescue document says every community has an Agency Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) responsible for the care of animals after a disaster, and that in most communities the AHJ is animal control. So the office to call about placing a station, borrowing a trap, or getting a camera checked while the zone is closed is your local animal control or county animal services, or whichever agency is designated to run the animal response.

The agency is expected to tell the public where to go. NASAAEP lists questions a public information officer has to answer, including where the public should go to look for a lost pet and where to take a found pet. Its Mass Care and Sheltering volume says the AHJ should manage reunification and messaging, including a dedicated phone number for lost and found animals and a dedicated location to view found reports. If your incident has one, it is your first phone call.

Trapping is not something you simply do. Holding and moving a free-roaming animal is governed by local ordinance, and during a declared incident an agency is in charge of it. Ask whether you may trap on the property, what happens if you catch a neighbor’s cat, and whether the agency wants to know about your station. Humane World for Animals says most animal control agencies and many rescue groups have a trap you can borrow, and the Missing Animal Response Network says traps can be rented from a local shelter or veterinarian or bought at hardware stores, pet stores or online.

If the animal is behind a closure and you are outside it, see our page on getting escorted access back into a closed zone, and on asking someone else to go in instead of going yourself. Neither, and not this page, will tell you to go around a checkpoint.

What the Method Is, and Who Publishes It

The station-and-camera method is what experienced searchers do, and two organizations describe it in writing.

The Missing Animal Response Network, which trains lost-pet searchers and consultants, says on its lost cat behavior page: “Sometimes setting a humane trap is not the best method to use to recover a missing cat.” It says digital wildlife cameras combined with feeding stations are often a better way to confirm possible sightings, or to confirm that a displaced cat is still in the immediate area. The concept is setting out food with a wildlife camera that photographs every animal that eats it, so the next morning you can pull the SD card and see which animals are there. It says that from that point you could work to strategically and humanely trap your cat while avoiding raccoons and other cats. It points readers to trained resources in its Pet Detective Directory rather than to a do-it-yourself procedure, and says cameras are a primary way to confirm a cat’s location and can show where to place humane traps.

Humane World for Animals gives the same order on its lost dog page. Place food and water in a safe spot within the area the dog is known to visit, use a motion-activated camera to see if it is eating, and once you know it is visiting and when, set a humane trap. That page is about dogs. What transfers is the order of operations, not the species.

The Missing Animal Response Network’s Surveillance Cameras page credits Danielle Robertson of Lost Pet Research and Recovery. It says using some method of surveillance can drastically increase the success of locating and catching a missing pet, and that a camera can provide evidence the pet is in the area and whether it will enter a humane trap.

So the shape is: put out food, point a camera at it, learn which animals come and when, and only then decide whether and where to trap. None of these pages writes that shape for a place where the buildings burned down or the water is still in the street.

What a Disaster Removes

The scent map. The AVMA’s recovery guidance says familiar scents and landmarks may have changed, which can confuse animals. The Missing Animal Response Network defines a displaced cat as one unexpectedly transplanted into an unfamiliar area, and after a fire or flood that area may be the cat’s own address.

The structures the method depends on. Humane World’s example of weather protection is a plastic storage container on its side. The ordinary method leans on decks, porches, garages, sheds and fence corners. The Missing Animal Response Network says frightened or injured cats seek concealment such as under a deck, house or porch, or in heavy brush, and they will not meow. In a burn scar several of those no longer exist, and in a flood the ones that do may be full of water or unsound.

The people. The ordinary method assumes neighbors who will let you search their yard or tell you what they saw at dawn. After an evacuation most are gone. NASAAEP’s Animal Search and Rescue document lists stray animals that are not contained among its example non-priority calls after a disaster, alongside nuisance complaints and wildlife calls where an animal is not injured. That is triage, and it explains why station work often ends up in the owner’s hands. It also says ASAR teams are typically deployed for immediate needs and demobilize once the AHJ can resume calls to service. The professional search has a shorter clock than yours.

What the Evidence Says About Where a Displaced Cat Is

The study, with its design attached

The paper people cite is Huang and colleagues, in Animals in 2018: Search Methods Used to Locate Missing Cats and Locations Where Missing Cats Are Found. The authors describe a retrospective case series in which “self-selected participants whose cat had gone missing provided data in an online questionnaire.” Its findings, kept separate because they are separate:

• Of 1210 study cats, only 61% were found within one year, and 34% were recovered alive by the owner within 7 days. Few cats were found alive after 90 days.
• There was evidence that physical searching increased the chance of finding the cat alive (p = 0.073), and 75% of cats were found within 500 m of the point of escape.
• Up to 75% of cats with outdoor access traveled 1609 m, further than indoor-only cats (137 m; p ≤ 0.001).

Search summaries often weld the last two into one range. They are separate: the first is the whole group measured from the escape point, and the second compares outdoor-access cats with indoor-only cats.

The paper’s limitations section says respondents may be more closely bonded to their cat than average and may have put in more effort to find it, so generalizability may be limited. It also reports that a substantial proportion of respondents had lost their cat more than six months earlier, with a median of 731 days, which raises recall error. This is a study of ordinary cats leaving ordinary houses in intact neighborhoods. The words disaster, flood, fire, hurricane, evacuation and wildfire do not appear in it. Its distance figures come from places where fences, sheds and hedges were still standing, so this page does not offer them as a search radius for a landscape where those are gone.

What does travel is the finding on method. A physical search was the most common method (96% of cats), and the authors conclude that thorough physical searching is useful and should be conducted within the first week.

On timing, the results say approximately one-third of missing cats (34%; 95% CI 31% to 37%) were found alive by day 7, 50% (95% CI 47% to 53%) by day 30, and 56% (95% CI 53% to 59%) by day 61. The next sentence decides how to read it: “There was little increase in probability of being found alive after day 61.” By one year, 61% had been found alive, rising to only 64% by 4 years. The curve climbs steeply for two months and then flattens. It does not keep climbing for a year. The outcome is a cat found alive, with being found dead treated as a competing risk, which is narrower than the looser word recovered.

None of that is a deadline. It is a probability from self-selected respondents about ordinary lost cats, and it argues for getting a station and camera out early, not for taking them down on a date. The station and camera do not replace the physical search. They tell you where to point it.

The field observation, with its own confidence attached

The Missing Animal Response Network’s account of displacement is not a study and does not present itself as one. It says a displaced cat is most likely hiding in silence, often not far from the escape point, because cats are territorial and their primary protective measure from predators is to hide in silence. It says the behavior has nothing to do with whether the cat loves you or recognizes your voice.

It also describes a threshold factor: many hidden cats eventually break cover, return home or to the escape point, or enter a humane trap. Some take hours or a few days; many take several days, typically ten to twelve. It marks its own confidence: it suspects the threshold is reached because of thirst, and says more research is needed. That is why a station is worth setting even when nothing appears on the first night. It is not a timetable.

Temperament matters more than any average. The network says a skittish cat is more likely nearby hiding in fear and will need a humane trap, while a gregarious cat could travel several blocks, even a mile or two, so you would need to knock on doors and post fluorescent posters at major intersections. That second branch is not a station-and-camera job, and after a disaster the doors may be empty. You know your cat. The averages do not.

Station Before Trap

In a disaster the temptation is to skip to the trap, because a trap feels like action. Three reasons to resist, the last with an example of ours:

• A trap in the wrong place catches nothing and teaches you nothing. The network’s stated purpose for the camera is to provide details on where to place humane traps.
• A trap can be the wrong instrument. The network says cameras with stations work especially well where a cat is displaced in an apartment complex with many cats, where there are many raccoons, or where a humane trap would be difficult to use. A disaster zone with unfamiliar animals and an owner who can only visit sometimes has more in common with that list than with a quiet suburb.
• A trap carries a monitoring duty. Humane World says to monitor the trap and quickly release any wildlife or other animal you unintentionally capture. If you cannot get back in for two days, a set trap is not a search tool.

One more reason is this site’s own reasoning, not a published rule: a station is cheap to move and a trap is not. The first week in a changed landscape is about finding where animals actually walk now. A station in the wrong place costs a bag of food. A trap in the same place costs the trap, the trips and the monitoring.

What Else Comes to the Food

Danielle Robertson, whose material the network republishes, is direct about the disagreement in her field: feeding stations can attract wildlife including predators, coyotes are a potential threat to cats in most areas of the U.S., and some pet detectives rarely or never use one. She adds that there are also risks to not providing food if the cat cannot be found and caught quickly. The risk runs both ways.

She also notes the conflict with colony practice. Most Trap-Neuter-Return sites feed once a day at a set time and leave food out for only 30 minutes, picking up the rest to avoid attracting wildlife. She says this is not practical for a lost cat, since many lost cats come out only at night and avoid human activity, and it often takes several days and sometimes a week or longer before the cat appears on camera. The feeding regime that limits wildlife is the one least likely to be running when a frightened, nocturnal cat finally comes out.

The one study that measured it

Robertson says she found only a single study on coyotes and cat feeding stations. Mitchell, Strohbach, Sorlien and Marshall published it in Society & Animals in 2022, studying a TNR feral cat colony in Rhode Island. A motion-activated camera produced 12,272 photographs, analyzed under three feeding regimes. The abstract’s finding: abundant food on the ground was associated with increased wildlife visits, while elevated or limited food was associated with decreased wildlife visits. In detail, coyote, raccoon and skunk visits were highest with abundant ground-level food. Only raccoon visits were common when food was equally abundant but elevated to table height. Visits by all three were low when food was limited on the ground and generally gone before they arrived at night. The authors write that “leaving abundant food in bowls on the ground may set the cats up for coyote predation.”

They qualify their strongest claim. The cats appeared to have short life spans, which could have been due to predation by coyotes, but the authors write that their study “was not set up to identify the source of mortality.” They found no direct evidence of predation, and note that if colonies are managed in a way that attracts coyotes, the likelihood of encounters increases. Presentation changes who shows up, and who shows up changes the odds of an encounter. The study did not measure what killed anything.

The design limits matter. It was one feral colony in Johnston, Rhode Island, watched over two years, with the feeding regime changed twice by the colony’s own tenders. It is not a lost-cat study or a disaster study, and coyote behavior differs by region. What it establishes is that how food is presented changes which animals show up and when, and that is a knob you have.

Robertson publishes measures of her own, with caveats. She says that if coyotes cannot access the food they are less likely to keep visiting, as the elevated-platform regime in the Mitchell study found, but that not all cats jump well, particularly old or overweight ones. Food could instead go on the ground near escape routes a cat can use and a coyote cannot, such as under a shed or deck, or in secured 12 inch by 6 foot PVC pipes. For a longer-term setup she describes a cat house with a door just big enough for the cat. She says there is minimal to no research behind her own coyote-deterrent suggestions. None of this is written for a burn scar or flooded block.

Disease and other wildlife

The Mitchell paper says all feeding methods enable the interspecific transfer of disease from saliva on bowls and feeders. It names feline leukemia virus and the raccoon rabies virus variant it describes as prevalent in Rhode Island, which is a regional fact. The mechanism, shared bowls and shared saliva, is not regional.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission gives the general version for any food left outdoors: animals that reliably find food near homes or businesses return looking for more, and bears, foxes, coyotes and raccoons will seek out porches or garages, which “increases the chance of dangerous encounters with people and pets.” It says raccoons, foxes and skunks around a food source can put people and pets at risk of exposure to rabies and other diseases, that fed deer, bears, coyotes, raccoons and alligators can become more aggressive toward people and pets, and that diseases can spread quickly when many animals eat from the same source. It is writing about people who feed wildlife on purpose, not about a lost-cat station, but the mechanism does not care why you put the bowl there.

The Conflict Nobody Resolves: A Station in an Ash Zone

Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s ash and debris section says: “Feed pets indoors and do not put food or treats directly on the ground, use a bowl that can be washed and cleaned after use.” It also says to keep pets from eating or licking anything on the ground, not to let them drink from puddles or water bowls left outside, and to discard any food exposed to smoke, heat or fire. A feeding station is food and water, outside, on the ground, in exactly the environment that sheet describes.

The county sheet is written about a pet already in your care at a property you have returned to. It does not address a station set to locate a missing cat, and it is not a prohibition aimed at you. But the hazard it describes does not depend on the animal’s ownership status. No source cited here weighs the two against each other: none says a cat missing in an ash zone is better served by food on the ground than by no food, and none says the opposite. The space between a hazard statement and a recovery method is a judgment call.

Make it a conversation. Your veterinarian knows your cat and what an exposure would mean for it. Your county animal services knows what is already being done in that zone. During the Eaton Fire, Pasadena Humane’s page said its team was setting up feeding stations for community cats in the Altadena and Pasadena areas. That is one organization, in one incident, with staff and authority, for community cats rather than a specific owner’s animal. It is a reason to call your own agency, not a template.

Two things to ask on that call: whether a station is appropriate at all in the area you have in mind, and if so, whether a container, raised surface or covered setup is preferable to a bowl on open ground, since presentation is the one variable the Mitchell paper measured.

If your cat does come back through ash, do not carry it into the house. EPA’s ash page says to clean ash off pets and other animals and keep them away from contaminated sites. The sourced sequence is on our page about decontaminating a cat after ash or floodwater.

The Camera: What Is Published, and What Is Not

The camera does not persuade an animal to do anything. It records what walked past.

What a camera is for. The network says cameras are a primary way to confirm a cat’s location and show where to place traps, and can show whether the pet will enter a humane trap. One published case turned on exactly that: the camera confirmed the cat was in the yard but not going into the small trap, so a drop trap was used instead. The camera did not catch the animal. It changed the equipment.

Set-up. The surveillance page says even a great camera won’t get a single picture of a lost pet if it is set up poorly, and that effectiveness depends on the quality of the camera and where and how it is set up.

The one height statement is a warning, not an instruction. The page points readers to a trail-camera retailer’s buyer’s guide and corrects it: because that site is aimed at deer hunters, its suggested camera height of 24 to 36 inches is too high for cats and small dogs, though most of the information applies. It names no right figure, and neither does this page.

Flash and theft. The network recommends infrared cameras that do not flash, so that no one sees them and they are less likely to be stolen. Unattended equipment in a zone under curfew or patrols may draw attention, so consider telling the agency running the zone that your camera is there.

What a camera measures. Mitchell and colleagues say a motion-activated camera at a feeding location can give a good estimate of population size in less than two weeks by counting distinct individual cats in photographs. That concerns counting cats at a feral colony, not a promise about yours, and the paper notes a hardware failure cost them one month of wildlife visitation data. Cameras fail, cards fill and batteries die in cold. Check rather than trust.

What no source published. No source cited here gives a camera height for a cat, trigger interval, detection distance, battery expectation, number of cameras or spacing. There is no brand comparison here, because there are no published figures to stand behind.

When the Camera Catches a Cat

The wrong cat. After a disaster more unfamiliar animals are moving than usual. The network publishes a case where cameras helped rule out the wrong cat (a gray tabby with a white chest) in one area while another camera confirmed where Binky, a Russian Blue, was hiding. Work from specific markings, and be willing to be wrong twice before you are right once.

A cat that does not behave like yours. NASAAEP’s Mass Care and Sheltering volume says: “What may seem to you to be a feral cat, may only be a very frightened cat.” It is written for shelter volunteers, but it transfers: a photograph of a cat that looks nothing like the animal you remember is not proof of anything either way. A photograph is a location and a time. It is not a diagnosis of the animal’s condition or a guarantee it will be there tomorrow.

If You Trap, What Comes Next

Route the animal, not just the trap. If you catch a cat that is not yours, that is not a wildlife release. Call your local animal control or the incident’s designated animal agency and follow what they tell you. NASAAEP’s Mass Care volume describes a dedicated location to bring stray animals and to view found reports. Someone else may be looking for the animal in your trap.

A hold clock may be involved, and it is not yours to set. NASAAEP says the AHJ may extend the hold time for stray animals beyond the normal scope, with a usual limit of 15 to 30 days. That is a best-practice statement about emergency sheltering, not the law where you live. What governs a stray hold, and what a facility accepts as proof of ownership, is covered on our page about proving a pet is yours and reclaiming it.

Do not go from the trap to the living room. A cat that has lived in a burn scar or flooded block carries what it lived in and will start grooming it off. The sourced sequence, including what never goes on the animal, is on our cat decontamination page. Call your veterinarian however the animal looks. If the cat fed at a station shared with raccoons or skunks, say so: shared bowls are a documented disease-transfer route, and a cat that ate alongside wildlife is a bite-risk and rabies-exposure question for the veterinarian, not only a decontamination one. If you think it swallowed or groomed off something toxic, the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center is (888) 426-4435, which it describes as available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and it says a consultation fee may apply.

Do not put the cat back outside to settle in. The AVMA says: “Release cats, dogs, and other small animals indoors only.” They could encounter dangerous wildlife and debris outside unsupervised. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health says to inspect the property for broken glass, exposed nails and other sharp objects and for loose or weakened structures, and not to let pets wander through areas where buildings or fences are damaged. The rest of that check is on our returning home with pets checklist. If other cats were separated from this one, see cats who no longer recognize each other after a separation.

Protecting Yourself While You Do This

A station in a burn zone means someone handling ash repeatedly, on a schedule. The idea that a short trip does not count is the assumption to discard.

EPA’s Protect Yourself from Ash page, last updated July 28, 2026, says ash from burned structures in the wildland-urban interface generally contains more harmful chemicals than forest ash, and names asbestos, heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals among possible dangers. It says people with heart or lung disease, older adults and pregnant women should not participate in ash cleanup, and that children should not be near ash or sites contaminated with ash, returning only after affected areas have been cleaned up. Better equipment does not soften those exclusions.

What EPA lists for the person going in:

• Work gloves, long-sleeved shirts, long pants, socks, and sturdy, thick-soled shoes to avoid skin contact.
• Goggles and head coverings to keep ash out of your eyes and hair, because contact with wet ash can cause chemical burns or skin irritation.
• A close-fitting respirator that filters ash particles, NIOSH Approved and printed with “NIOSH” and either “N95” or “P100.” These have two straps and must seal snugly to the face. EPA says: “Surgical masks and one-strap dust masks will not protect your lungs.”
• If you have heart or lung disease, talk to your health provider before using a respirator or working around ash. A respirator is not a way around the exclusion above.

If you get ash on your skin, in your eyes or in your mouth, EPA says to wash it off as soon as you can. Nothing here extends that into a rinse time or a soap.

None of that goes on an animal. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health says: “Do not place an N95 respirator on your pet.” It says N95 respirators for people can be harmful to pets, because elastic straps can choke or strangle them and the mask material can block their ability to breathe through the nose or pant.

Three more EPA points bear on this errand:

• What you carry back. Do not track ash offsite, into your car, or places where others can be exposed. Wash your hands and change into clean clothes and shoes before you get into your car, and seal contaminated clothing and shoes in a plastic bag before putting it in the trunk. If your animals are staying elsewhere, you are the connection between the ash and them.
• Your own food at the site. EPA advises avoiding bringing food or eating at the affected site unless the food is in a sealed container, and washing your hands before eating. That is about your food, not a station, but it is the only line in the sources cited here that touches food at an ash site.
• What stops the job. If you suspect hazardous waste, including asbestos, contact local hazardous waste authorities, and consider professional help for structural damage or hazardous materials. Suspected asbestos is a phone call, not a task. This page describes no method for handling, wetting, bagging or moving debris, and you should not improvise one to get a camera onto a post.

Wildlife is a hazard to you as well as the cat. You are the one placing, checking and re-baiting a station that draws coyotes, raccoons and skunks, and Robertson notes many lost cats come out only at night, which is when a station most needs checking. What follows is this page’s own reasoning, not a published protocol: do not approach in the dark without a light, do not reach into a covered or enclosed station without seeing inside first, do not handle bowls or bait bare-handed, tell someone where you are going and when you will be back, and ask county animal services what is moving through the zone.

For the flood version of the same problem, and for animals living through weeks of gutting and remediation, see keeping pets safe during gutting and mold remediation. For what is in your yard’s soil for months after a fire, see post-fire yard and soil contamination.

The Flood Version Is a Different Set of Questions

No source cited here publishes a homeowner station protocol for a flooded block. NASAAEP’s Animal Search and Rescue document, under Feed-in-Place, lists questions a professional response asks before feeding animals in a flood-damaged area. They were written for responders feeding animals confined in a structure, but they are the right questions for a daily visit:

• Is the structure accessible for feeding in place?
• Will teams need to access by boat?
• Is there debris that makes it unsafe for daily visits?
• Are the projected flood levels rising or falling?
• Will access to the property be consistent and improved, or is it under threat of being cut off by worsening conditions?
• Are there security concerns for staff making daily visits?

Read the list as a screening test. If the honest answer to two or three is no, your answer is a call to the agency, not a trip with a bag of food.

The Numbers No Source Publishes

No source cited here gives a search radius for a disaster zone (the distance figures that circulate come from a questionnaire study of ordinary lost cats whose own limitations warn about generalizability), station spacing or number of stations, a camera height for a cat (the one figure in the record is a retailer’s deer-hunting height that the network says is too high), a trigger interval, detection range or battery figure, a bait quantity or feeding schedule for this situation, or a duration. The nearest thing to a duration is the Huang probability curve, which describes how the odds behave, not when to take a station down.

Nor is there a homeowner protocol. NASAAEP’s equipment appendix lists bait food and humane traps under capturing companion animals, and cameras under assessment and documentation needs. It does not describe a station-and-camera detection method. Its Mass Care volume mentions lost and found assistance, including arrangements for trapping frightened loose pets, as a service a supply distribution site may provide an opportunity to offer. That is a service an agency might stand up, not a method published for you.

Set It Up Before Anything Happens

• Photographs a stranger could match. Face-forward in good light, the animal alone, plus one shot of each distinctive marking. Our reunification workflow covers what a photograph has to give a matching system.
• A microchip registration that reaches a phone you will still answer. Our microchip registration audit walks the checks, including the case where the registry still lists a shelter or previous owner.
• The name and number of the office that would run this. In most communities that is animal control. Find out now who it is where you live, and whether they lend traps.
• A decision about whether you would set a station in an ash zone at all, made in advance with your veterinarian.
• A written log. Where each station is, when you placed it, when you checked it, what the card showed, who you told. In a landscape without landmarks, a written position is the only position you have.

The Checklist

• File with animal control, the shelters and the lost-and-found databases first, and keep those reports active. A station does not replace them.
• Ask the agency running the incident whether the area is open to you, and do not enter a closed or burned area to search.
• Ask your local animal control or county animal services about placing a station, borrowing a trap, and whether they are already working the area.
• Ask, on the same call, what to do if you catch a cat that is not yours.
• Decide with your veterinarian whether a station belongs in an ash zone at all, knowing a county health department tells owners not to put food or water on the ground there and that no source resolves that against a search.
• Place the station where you can return inside whatever access window you have been given.
• Point a camera at it before you set any trap.
• Expect other animals. One peer-reviewed colony study recorded coyotes, raccoons and skunks, and found that how the food was presented changed how many came.
• Treat every visit as an approach to a baited site: bring a light after dark, do not reach blind into a covered station, do not handle bowls or bait bare-handed, tell someone where you are going and when you will return.
• Do not set a trap you cannot get back to. Monitor it and quickly release anything you catch by accident.
• Work from specific markings when a cat appears on the card, and be prepared to rule cats out.
• Wear what EPA lists for ash, and put none of it on any animal.
• Wash your hands, change your clothes and shoes, and bag anything ash-covered before it goes in the car.
• Log every station, check, card and call, on paper.
• When the cat is in hand, decontaminate before the house and call your veterinarian, however it looks.

Where to Go Next

This page is a spoke of our pet emergency playbooks hub.

• The job this page sits inside: how to find a lost pet after a disaster. If local facilities keep coming back empty, see what happens when a lost pet is transported out of the county or state.
• The cat is found but cannot be reached: getting a hiding or frightened cat into a carrier, escorted re-entry into a closed zone, and requesting a welfare check or rescue.
• The cat comes back: decontaminating a cat after ash or floodwater, then returning home with pets after a disaster, then pet behavior changes after a disaster.
• The search is long: guilt after leaving a pet behind carries the same crisis lines, and what to do if a pet died in a disaster covers the decisions that follow that outcome. Neither, and not this page, will tell you when to stop looking.
• Afterward: the pet evacuation after-action review.

If the Search Is Wearing You Down

Three crisis lines are open 24 hours a day, every day, as of August 11, 2026. SAMHSA’s Disaster Distress Helpline page, last updated 09/26/2025, says “Call or text 1-800-985-5990.” In Spanish: “Llama o envía un mensaje de texto 1-800-985-5990 presiona “2.”” For Deaf and Hard of Hearing ASL callers, it says to text or call 1-800-985-5990 using your preferred Relay provider. SAMHSA says there is no need to give identifying information, and that any basic questions a counselor asks at the end of the call are optional. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline takes calls and texts at 988 and chat at 988lifeline.org, and says it is available 24/7/365 and that conversations are free and confidential. The Veterans Crisis Line publishes “Dial 988 then Press 1” and “Text 838255”, offers chat online, and says you do not have to be enrolled in VA benefits or health care to connect. Talking to a licensed mental health professional is a reasonable step.