brooke and several other cat fanciers contacted the chinese embassy in the uk, and carl hagenbeck's animal exchange in hamburg and also a "certain well-known author, who has lived for years in china and knows that country well", but their enquiries bore no fruit. the search for this cat became so intense in the 1920s that the american express company instructed their representatives at shanghai and peking to make enquiries with the wild animal dealers who supplied zoos. they also had no success finding a chinese lop-eared cat for cat fanciers in the west. with all avenues of enquiry finally exhausted, brooke declared the chinese lop-eared cat extinct.