Meet the real-life pet detective who finds 24,000 lost animals a year

It’s 3.34pm on Tuesday 7 March, and time is running out to find Maow Maow. The nine-month-old Bengal cross – or ‘cat’ to the uninitiated – went missing from his semi-detached home on a housing estate near Hereford precisely 12 days, 18 hours and, well, 30 minutes ago. It is a mystifying case. Here’s what we know…

Maow Maow probably hasn’t gone far. According to his owners, he has always been self-assured and out-going, but it’s not in his nature to stray far from their small garden. Nor was there anything particularly out of the ordinary when they let him out for his evening constitutional at 9pm that fateful Wednesday.

The wind was up, but gales hadn’t flustered him before. He was fit, healthy and neutered. He’d eaten his Whiskas as usual. Like a tiny, fur-covered Captain Oates, Maow Maow simply went outside and never returned.