Manoa residents this week may have been surprised to find among the numerous election campaigns fliers one that said, "Siren: I’m lost. Please help me get home."
Pictured was a 4-year-old, black and gray tabby that has been missing from her Kumulani Place home near Manoa Falls since Sept. 23.
This is a tale not only of a beloved missing pet, but the lengths its owners — Jessica and Matt Lawrence — have gone to find the kitty who has a tendency to roam. They have spent more than $1,700 trying to find their lost cat and countless hours on the Internet.
"It’s not unusual for Siren to leave for three days at a time," said Jessica Lawrence. "She does every couple of months."
But this time it’s been nearly a month.
Jessica and her husband did the usual when Siren was missing after three days.
They walked the quiet Manoa neighborhood searching for Siren, named after the femmes fatales who in Greek mythology lured sailors with their enchanting music and voices, shipwrecking the vessels.
The couple printed 100 color fliers and placed them in markets, stores and establishments, and key intersections in Manoa Valley.
Jessica Lawrence went online and contacted PetAmberAlert.com and paid $189 on Oct. 1, which covered calls to 1,200 phones in Manoa with a message concerning their missing pet. The fee also covered the cost of faxing and emailing a lost-cat poster to veterinarians, animal shelters and animal control officers within 10 to 100 miles of the location where Siren was last seen.
Besides visiting the Humane Society almost daily, checking with people at the University of Hawaii who feed strays and placing an ad in Craigslist, Lawrence paid $1,000 for 180 magnets that had a color photo of Siren and the couple’s phone number.
Lawrence said she had planned to walk through Manoa putting the magnets on mailboxes.
That didn’t work when she discovered that too many mailboxes are aluminum.
So Lawrence decided to try to reach more people in Manoa by bulk-mailing her plea.
Lawrence’s online research and visits to three postal stations showed that she could pinpoint her distribution by picking specific postal routes.
After spending $140 to print 2,200 gray, 11-by-41⁄2-inch cards, Lawrence paid another $400 to the Postal Service to deliver them on five routes in Manoa on Wednesday. The mailer listed the Lawrences’ phone number — 220-4485 — as well as Siren’s microchip ID — 015116103.
Siren has green-yellow eyes and a black freckle on both sides of her nose. She has a white chin and a white spot on her chest where the black stripes come together.
Lawrence said the response she got to the mailer was "very nice."
There also were leads that didn’t pan out.
"We really don’t know what else to do, but we hope one day she’ll simply walk back in her kitty door and we’ll be glad she had a safe adventure," Lawrence said. "We just can’t figure out why she’s been gone so long."
She hopes that "Siren has found someone who let her in their home and they adopted her without first checking to see if she has a microchip and belongs to someone else," she said. "We know this happens with the best intentions, but if that is the case, we’d thank the family for taking care of her, but we would really like our little girl back."
If that happens, Lawrence says Siren will be getting a GPS collar before she is let out of the house again.
