Have You Seen This Tabby? (Check Your Carry-On)

Courtesy of Iris Yu Xiaohwa, who was heading for Taiwan, bolted from her travel carrier at Kennedy International Airport last week and has been on the loose since.

Iris Yu left a lot behind when she left Queens to care for her ailing father in Taiwan 10 months ago. But she was finally set to reunite with her cat, Xiaohwa, courtesy of a friend who was leaving for Taiwan last Thursday and agreed to take the cat to her.

When a Transportation Security Administration officer at Kennedy International Airport inspected Xiaohwa's crate just before departure, though, the cat darted and disappeare d into the bowels of Terminal 4.

Just like that, Xiaohwa, a 4-year-old tabby and mother to several litters of kittens (though none recently), became the latest in the growing roster of pets to go missing in an airport, leaving Ms. Yu and her boyfriend, Jerry Cheung, distraught.

Mr. Cheung, 36, of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, said on Tuesday that he did not think the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport, was doing enough to find Xiaohwa.

“I can understand that there's a limit to what they can do,” he said. “But are they really doing anything to look for the cat? This is the part that I doubt.”

Courtesy of Iris Yu Xiaohwa is 4 yea rs old.

The Port Authority did not respond on Tuesday to a request for comment on the disappearance, which was reported Monday by DNAInfo.

The Transportation Security Administration said in a statement: “T.S.A. officers screened the pet and its carrier properly. It is unfortunate that the pet is missing at the airport. But, as a reminder, passengers are responsible for their pets throughout the screening process.”

Aiding in the effort to find Xiaohwa (the name, meaning “little flower,” is pronounced like “shower” with the “r” left off) are two veterans of airport pet disappearances, Bonnie Folz and Mary Beth Melchior.

Ms. Folz, a dog trainer, helped lead the search when Vivi the whippet, a prize-winning show dog, went missing in 2006 at Kennedy. Vivi never resurfaced. Ms. Folz said she hoped the Port Authority, which usually tries to passively catch animals with humane traps, would allow her to search the airport, including i n areas that are normally off limits.

Ms. Melchior leads Where Is Jack?, an organization focused on animals' travel safety. It is named for her sister's cat, Jack, who escaped his carrier and went missing for 61 days at Kennedy last year before falling through a ceiling tile. He turned up, but was so malnourished and infection-prone that he had to be euthanized.

Mr. Cheung said he was afraid that Xiaohwa, a stray that he and Ms. Yu adopted two years ago, could not survive long without care because she has the feline version of H.I.V.

“We took it in as a stray when we found her and tried to give her a good home,” he said. “And now she has to go back to being a stray again.”