There are some things in this world you can take to the bank, and one of them is that I am reading a book about World War II. My father, to the day he died at the ripe old age of 104, read World War II books, and I am my father’s son. So it should surprise no one that the one place I have always wanted to visit was Hiroshima.
I came within 150 miles of doing so.
Last month, my wife, daughter, and I were on a highly-anticipated and long-desired trip to Japan. We were about halfway through the visit, in Kyoto, when disaster struck.
The phone rang at 4:30 a.m., the morning we were scheduled to take a bullet train to Hiroshima to visit ground zero, now known as the Peace Memorial. It was the pet sitter: Roki, my daughter’s semi-feral cat, had escaped.
Roki was rescued from the streets living alone in a car’s engine block, and now he was back outside. Because of his early feral start in life, he will not go near anyone except my daughter — but we were 5,350 miles away.
Making matters worse, the first 24 or so hours are crucial, as cats — especially timid or fearful cats — hide near the place they escaped before eventually wandering off. Rather than take the train to Hiroshima, we took it back to Tokyo, where we caught the next plane back to San Francisco.
We learned that on the night Roki got out, he tried to get back in but went to the wrong apartment. Neighbors heard scratching at their door at 3 a.m. and opened it to see him, but when he saw they were not my daughter, he bolted. By the time we got home — stressed, exhausted, jetlagged, and fearful — Roki was nowhere to be found.
The next few days were a flurry of activity: setting a trap for Roki, putting out food, hanging flyers throughout the neighborhood, registering his microchip as lost, filing a report with the local shelter, contacting rescue and community cat groups, posting on Nextdoor, hitting the pavement day and night, going door to door, even using a thermal drone and infrared night scope to try and find him. We followed every single lead, every sighting, and every Ring camera video — and there were a lot of them.
There were a lot of them because we weren’t searching alone; the community had rallied once again. I say “once again” because they were the key to rescuing Roki a year ago. Back in June of 2025, over a period of two days, 14 Good Samaritans responded to a clarion call on Nextdoor when Animal Services and other public agencies refused to help.
You can read about his rescue here.
And now they were helping again.
The one thing we heard over and over in response to our flyers, posts, and pleas was well wishes from people who had sighted a black cat. One family was on a cruise aboard the Queen Mary II in the Atlantic and sent me Ring Camera updates. Even my fellow softball players stopped a game in the middle of an at-bat during the 7th inning, in response to a sighting so I could take off in pursuit of the elusive Roki. Almost no one was dismissive; all of them were hoping for the best. “Pets are everything,” I heard over and over. People I had never met who spotted him once kept checking in: “Is Roki home yet?” People who had no connection to him would periodically call for updates, because they saw a flyer.
Text after text, call after call, Ring camera video after Ring camera video, we trailed Roki, always one step behind him, from block to block and backyard to backyard, until we tracked him to a cul-de-sac a few blocks from my daughter’s apartment building.
Most of the households on the cul-de-sac joined the Roki watch, checking the trap frequently, leaving food for him, and sending updates. By this time, however, over a month had passed, and my daughter could not get close enough to him before he ran off scared.
But at least he was staying put.
Unfortunately, trapping him failed. He refused to go in no matter what food was used, though other neighborhood critters did — including an opossum who played dead until we opened the trap door. So we ended up purchasing a drop trap.
And so along with my wife, I sat in a car on a stakeout, holding the string attached to a trap, reading a book about World War II, and waiting for Roki to take the bait.
And then he did!
Roki is now safe at home. After a very trying month, we are relieved and elated. As are all of the neighbors.
Thank heavens for kindhearted people.
Thank you for not giving up and thank you to everyone who took the loss of someone else's pet personally and helped in the search instead of saying he's been gone too long and good luck to you. You just keep tracking and creating support and other eyes and ears join you. s Over and over again I have learned and come to depend upon the kindness of strangers whose involvement made recovery possible. It's never to late to search for a lost companion animal.
Let's hope for no more escapes for Roki -- the search is always anxiety-ridden (my own experience) -- so happy he's home --- enjoy Japan.