When trying to reunite a lost cat and its human, the Web’s “information superhighway” seems like a perfect tool — until you try using it in Kitsap County.

Speaking from very recent personal experience, the Web is a frustrating place to go looking for a way to find the cat’s home.

With apologies to printed newspapers and their classified ads, the Web offers a potentially better way to help the cat find its home after the first week or so of roaming.

By the time the cat begins camping out under some bushes in my front yard, any “lost cat” ad placed in a newspaper long ago ran its course — and I had no reason to pay attention back then.

Assuming the human who belongs to this tomcat spent the money to place an ad in the paper, it’s no longer available to the humans who have now been picked by the cat as his source of food, shelter and companionship.

Feed a man a fish and he eats for a day, but feed a cat and it’s yours forever — or until a better deal is discovered.

Well, I’m not intending to house this fellow forever, no matter how handsome and entertaining he is.

But I’m also enough of a soft touch that I delay taking that trip to the Kitsap Humane Society to put him into its shelter.

They say in an entry posted on Facebook on Labor Day that the shelter is “full,” so this little tomcat might have a long wait for adoption — assuming he doesn’t find his way back home first.

On the Hu-

mane Society’s website, a recent notice says they are changing over to new software, so pictures aren’t available right now.

That’s my kind of luck — this tomcat has a twin living in California with a photograph on the Web.

Sending that photo along with my “found cat report” to the Humane Society didn’t get the report or the photo onto its website.

Maybe the new software will eventually make it possible to use the Humane Society’s website to post a lasting notice complete with photo that the cat’s humans may see.

But for now, the best they offer is a recorded message on the telephone to tell what animals have been found and reported to the Humane Society.

And the recorded message only included this tomcat for two days after my report went to them — not even as good as a classified ad.

It’s reasonable not to keep the report on the recording, since it would be interminably long if each animal stayed on the list until restored to its home.

Another feature on the Humane Society’s website was changed to new software at the beginning of this year and became useless because of “spam” entries having nothing to do with lost and found pets.

Of 337 entries on their “lost cat” forum, not one that I could find said anything about a lost cat.

This probably sounds unduly critical of the Humane Society, but it’s not meant that way.

They do the best they can, I’m sure, but it looks as though they could use some help with their website.

Any volunteers?

For this “information superhighway” to serve the purpose needed by us soft touches, there has to be a way to post a written description of the animal, place and time found, and a photo.

The Kitsap Humane Society shelter and pet adoption program may often be the next step, but it surely would be nice to have a step to take before that.

When a tomcat takes up residence in my yard and insinuates his way into my house — silver-tongued devil that he is — I need an easy and reliable way to notify the person that belongs to him.

This fellow wears a harness but no tag — tags are for dogs, I guess.

And unfortunately he has no implanted microchip.

So, absent a bit of luck in the next few days, it’s off to the shelter with this Snowshoe tomcat — the Web having failed us.

Robert Meadows is a Port Orchard resident.