Lawrence resident and Kansas University graduate student Alexis Catanzarite is pictured with her cat, Tonks Kitty, who went missing in early October and was recovered Dec. 5. After nearly two months of mailing out fliers, following false leads and spending what she estimates to be over ,000 in the recovery effort, Catanzarite recovered Tonks Kitty with the help of a tip from another Lawrence resident.

Lawrence resident and Kansas University graduate student Alexis Catanzarite is pictured with her cat, Tonks Kitty, who went missing in early October and was recovered Dec. 5. After nearly two months of mailing out fliers, following false leads and spending what she estimates to be over ,000 in the recovery effort, Catanzarite recovered Tonks Kitty with the help of a tip from another Lawrence resident.

For 57 long, cold days, a 4-year-old calico named Tonks Kitty had an adventure — and she’s not telling where she went

To get her back, the cat’s owner, Kansas University graduate student Alexis Catanzarite, had quite the adventure herself. She spent about $2,000 to find her lost cat. She ultimately succeeded, but came away with a piece of advice: Microchip your pets.

During a rainstorm Oct. 9, Catanzarite moved plants indoors from her balcony. About a half-hour later, she realized the cat was gone.

“She must have darted out; it was awful,” Catanzarite said. “She’s a strictly indoor-only cat.”

Catanzarite posted fliers offering a $250 reward on every door in her apartment complex. She printed 3-by-4-foot neon posters and tacked them along Sixth Street.

Tonks Kitty, named after a Harry Potter character, became a local Internet celebrity. Catanzarite posted daily on Facebook groups for local missing pets. She developed a following of cheerleaders, whose well wishes Catanzarite said kept her going when she wanted to give up.

After three weeks, Catanzarite expanded her efforts. She set six animal traps around her apartment complex, placed advertisements in the Journal-World, knocked on hundreds of doors, toured the Lawrence Humane Society and even bought a motion camera intended for hunters to scope out what animals were lurking in the night. But two months went by and all she found was a few squirrels, two opossums and four stray cats.

“We had done everything, but nothing seemed to work,” Catanzarite said. “I just didn’t have hope.”

As a last-ditch effort, Catanzarite said, she placed an order at lostpetcards.com to send out 1,000 postcards with her cat’s photo and her phone number.

“At that point, I thought, ‘if this doesn’t work, it’s just not going to happen,'” Catanzarite said. “But a week after they were sent, I got a call.”

A couple who lived a mile and a half from Catanzarite’s apartment said they saw the calico eating on their porch. Catanzarite set up the motion camera at the couple’s home, recognized her cat and staked out the porch on Dec. 4, spotting the cat just after midnight Dec. 5.

“I just freaked out. I read all this stuff that said the worst thing is to call a cat, but I knew she would come to me,” Catanzarite said. “We have a very codependent bond.”

Catanzarite began meowing, and the cat called back. Catanzarite sat on the ground and her long-lost pet ran straight into her outstretched arms, she said.

“She was nothing but bones and fur. She’d lost half her body weight,” Catanzarite said. “If I gave up, she would have died.”

Lawrence Humane Society director Kate Meghji said Catanzarite was certainly not alone in her lost-pet heartbreak. The shelter took in 2,139 stray animals last year — about two-thirds of their total intake — and returned 555 to their owners.

Of the 555 animals, 75 were cats and 473 were dogs. The other seven were small animals like rabbits. Meghji attributes the higher number of dogs than cats returned to owners to the fact that dog owners are more likely to microchip their pets, and to the large number of stray cats in Lawrence.

Meghji said the best way to help pets be found is to have a veterinarian implant microchips, which are about the size of a grain of rice and placed near the shoulder blades. The microchip can be registered with a national database with the owner’s contact information.

“The best thing someone can do if they find an animal is to bring it to us or a veterinarian to have it scanned for a microchip,” Meghji said. “It’s pretty traumatic when your pet you love is gone. It’s awful, just the not-knowing.”