INGRAM, TEXAS – Sherry Sweeney holds out a handful of cat food and calls after a small tabby prowling between giant, uprooted trees.
"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty," she coaxes, stepping lightly and slowly. The cat spooks, darting under a pile of debris that was once a house.
Sweeney stands in what remains of a trailer park next to the Guadalupe River, completely destroyed after heavy rain last Friday caused the river to suddenly rise more than 20 feet overnight, sweeping away nearly everything in its path for miles. At least 120 people have died, and more than 170 are missing, according to local authorities.
Since then, hundreds of residents in the disaster zone have reported their pets missing to local animal shelters. Volunteers like Sweeney are out searching, hoping to reunite pets with their owners.
At this trailer park in Ingram, homes are smashed and broken, and cars have been crumpled and tossed about like toys. But Sweeney is relatively used to this kind of destruction – she's helped find pets in the aftermath of several other local floods and tornadoes.
Today, she's here working with Austin Pets Alive!, a nonprofit rescue that mobilizes after disasters in Texas. She drove more than five hours overnight to the site when she heard that several residents were missing their pets and needed help.
"I would want someone to do it for me," she says, tearing up a bit. "I can't help with anything else, but I can help with their pets."
Sweeney focuses on capturing cats – mostly using metal traps set with food strategically placed in locations where one has been seen – since she says they can be harder to catch than dogs.
"You know, a dog after something goes on, they're like 'Hey, I'm right here! Come get me!," she says. "But a cat doesn't do that. A cat's gonna hide for days."
That's a problem, not only for the people looking for them. Cats often hide among the rubble, and run the risk of being hurt or killed when the bulldozers come in to clear it.
Sweeney has already caught one cat – chatty, grey and fluffy, with bright green eyes – who meows from a nearby carrier. Leaving it in the shade, she walks to the very front of the park, where a home is still standing but badly damaged. She sets a trap nearby after hearing that the owner, 71-year-old Cindy McCarthey, reported several of her cats missing.
McCarthey is inside, clearing out what she can salvage. Furniture is strewn about, dishes and plates are broken on the floor and other belongings are badly water damaged.
"I don't know where to start, this is just overwhelming," she says, handing a box of Stetson cowboy hats to her daughter-in-law Laura McCarthey outside.
Cindy McCarthey says she had eight cats before the flood, several of which she rescued from the road outside her house after watching people dump them from cars.
"My husband passed away last October, and they've been a great solace to me," she says.
Cindy McCarthey was asleep when the water started to fill her home — which, for decades, had never even come close to flooding, she says. By the time she realized what was happening, she couldn't escape. So she and her cats had to ride it out inside.
She sat on an armchair recliner in her living room, as far from the windows as she could get, and managed to keep hold of three of the cats. But the others scattered, she says.
"Bear-bear lost his life. He got caught in the slats under my bed," she says. She later found him drowned from the rising water.
"And Rambo jumped out the bedroom window when a tree went through it," she says.
She says she assumed Rambo was dead; three others also were still missing.
Laura McCarthey says it's probably hard for the lost pets to find their way home, since nothing in the neighborhood is recognizable anymore.
"They go to find their familiar smells, and they're all gone because of the flood."
Just then, Sweeney calls from outside – a cat just wandered into the trap she placed earlier.
Cindy McCarthey's face brightens. "Is it ginger? Long hair? Which one is it?," she calls, coming around the corner to look.
Sweeney holds up the cage. Inside, a black and grey cat thrashes around, overwhelmed.
"That's Rambo!" Cindy McCarthey exclaims, clapping. "He's alive! That's Rambo!"
Sweeney stands next to the cage, beaming. "See? This is why I do it," she says.
They make a plan – Rambo will go to the local shelter, Kerrville Pets Alive, where volunteer veterinarians are checking on rescued animals. The McCartheys will pick him up later in the day.
At the shelter, Dr. Mallory Cade looks over Rambo and gives him a clean bill of health. Cade says she mostly has seen cats come in.
"They can climb trees and get away, so we're going to see more cats than dogs make it out. But there have absolutely been dogs, too," she says.
The shelter has collected hundreds of reports of missing pets, creating a database and then trying to identify animals as they come in. They also work to identify any dead pets that are found, hoping to bring closure to the owners still searching.
"Right now, we're kind of the first responders for animals," says Karen Guerriero, president and co-founder of Kerrville Pets Alive. She says conditions have been making rescue efforts more difficult and dangerous, but there's been a lot of demand.
"We've got livestock, wildlife, dogs and cats. This is a retirement community, so for many people here, their pet is their most important thing," she says.
Guerriero lives in Kerrville, and knows people who were killed and others who lost everything. It's been an emotionally difficult time for everyone.
"You've got your heart hurting. And so it's kind of healing to have these reunions between pets and people," she says.
Which is why Sherry Sweeney turns around and heads right back out, hoping to make more of those reunions happen. As the sun sets on another day in the disaster area, she continues the work: setting traps, calling for cats and waiting for them to come home.
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