‘It’s like ‘Homeward Bound’’: Cat found miles away from home at Sapphire Point after more than 2 weeks in the wild
How exactly Finley, a 4-year-old black-and-white cat, traveled over 7 miles from his home in Breckenridge to a mountain lookout at Sapphire Point will likely remain a mystery
Summit Lost Pet Rescue/Courtesy photo
When Breckenridge resident Alyson Zinniker first realized her cat Finley was missing late last month, she thought the 4-year-old, black-and-white longhair might be hiding in a closet or curled up in some odd corner of the house.
But after the indoor-only pet, whom Zinniker described as “super shy” and a “scaredy cat,” didn’t show himself for three days, she called Summit Lost Pet Rescue, a group of local volunteers dedicated to tracking down lost pets.
Volunteers helped launch a search, posting neon fliers with Finley’s picture and fanning out across the neighborhood near Boreas Mountain to look for the cat. Because he is a “nighttime cat,” Zinniker said she borrowed a headlamp to search for him when he tends to be most active.
A week went by.
Then, two.
There were reports of a black-and-white cat in the neighborhood, but it was not Finley. Zinniker said she started to think he may never return home.
Little did she know that Finley had somehow made it more than 7 miles from her home, across Summit County to a popular tourist destination on Swan Mountain, where a group of visitors from Michigan would find him — alive and well.
“I had really given up hope,” Zinniker said on Wednesday, July 17, the morning after being reunited with Finley. “I had even given back the headlamps to my neighbors yesterday at like 5 p.m. like, ‘We don’t need these anymore.'”
Visitors discover missing cat at popular tourist destination
Michigan resident Shannan Thompson said she never expected to help rescue a cat when she stopped at Sapphire Point on Swan Mountain with two co-workers late Tuesday, July 16. Halfway up a twisty mountain pass at 9,500 feet, Sapphire Point looks out over the Dillon Reservoir toward Breckenridge and the Tenmile Range.
After a long day of test driving vehicles for high altitude performance in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, she and her two friends had climbed down the rocks near the lookout point to enjoy the sunset. It was around 8:30 p.m., and no one else was around, when they heard a “meow.”
“He seemed to just pop out from behind some boulders,” Thompson said. “I have some experience with lost pets, feral cats, and stray cats. He immediately made eye contact with me and started meowing. I know that means he’s interested. He knows humans.”
From the way Finley came out from behind the rocks, seemingly in response to hearing voices, she said she knew he was most likely a pet and “part of someone’s family.” So far away from the nearest neighborhood, she said “he just seemed like a little dude who made a wrong turn.”
But he was also “timid,” Thompson said. And as she approached him, he scurried back into the rocks. As Finley meowed from within the rocks, she meowed back.
“Being in the wild, he probably had some experiences that made him want to run into the little cave,” she said. “I kept talking to him, and he kept meowing back. We had a nice little conversation.”
For several minutes, Thompson continued this exchange with Finley until the cat started toward her.
“His little head popped out, and he slowly crawled out of the rocks,” she said. “He was looking at me. Meowing with me. He immediately head butted me, started rubbing. I tried to pick him up to see if he was familiar with that.”
Finley folded right into Thompson’s arms, without resistance.
“I said, ‘Alright, this is definitely part of someone’s family; we’ve got to figure out what to do with him.'”
Summit Lost Pet Rescue preaches patience when cats go missing
Hours after returning the borrowed headlamps to her neighbors Tuesday, July 16, Zinniker was lying in bed, missing Finley, who would often curl up on her chest at night, when she got a call from her boyfriend.
It was 10:30 p.m. He said he had just talked to Summit Lost Pet Rescue, which had sent a picture of the cat that had been rescued from Sapphire Point just hours earlier. When Zinniker looked at the picture, her heart leapt.
“I immediately was like ‘Yeahm that’s him,'” she said. “It’s still surreal to me that he’s home. He’s lost a little weight. He’s just been sleepy and cuddly. You can tell he’s seen some (stuff) out there, too, because he’s definitely more confident of a cat, too.”
She said her boyfriend jokes that Finley is the “Alpha of the house now” because their 120-pound mastiff no longer picks on him like he used to. Back home, Finley was also reunited with his sister Penelope, who for a moment, “looked like she saw a ghost” before sniffing lovingly at him, she said.
Summit Lost Pet Rescue volunteer Curtis Weller recalled helping to canvas the Breckenridge neighborhood, where Finley went missing, using a spotlight to look under decks, sheds, and vehicles.
“More than anything we preach patience with cats because they like to hide,” he said. “Sometimes, you never know where they hide. They just reappear. Like with this cat, Finley — the biggest mystery is how he got from his home over to Sapphire Point. We may never know the answer to that.”
An incredible journey for a shy cat
Summit Lost Pet Rescue speculates that Finley probably hid inside a car that took off and then stopped somewhere near Sapphire Point. Zinniker said that’s possible but added that her boyfriend jokes that Finley probably made the trek from their home in Breckenridge to Sapphire Point himself in some sort of epic adventure.
“It’s like ‘Homeward Bound,'” Zinniker said. “He made it all the way there. The girls that found him said he had a little cave that he had come out of. It seems like he had been super resourceful. I really can’t believe he was at Sapphire Point. That’s insane to me.”
Zinniker said she is thankful for all the “random people” who helped search for Finley, from the pet rescue volunteers and those who called to report possible sightings to Thompson and her friends who found him. She said they should know “what they did really mattered.”
Thompson said she was glad to be able to contribute to the local sense of community in her short time in Summit County. She recalled seeing Zinniker shocked and “overwhelmed with joy” when she and Finley were reunited in a parking lot late Tuesday night.
“One thing I remember her saying is, ‘I kept losing hope. I kept losing hope,'” Thompson said. “Life is this crazy thing, and there are all these chances to lose hope, and there are not a lot of good chances to regain hope. So being there to see her get reunited with her family, it was just such a joyful moment.”
Weller, who said he has spent hundreds of hours volunteering with Summit Lost Pet Rescue, noted that while many pets that go missing are found close to home, other pet rescues take weeks and involve multiple compassionate parties coming together.
“Our message to others is to never give up hope,” he said. “We’d like them to be home quickly. We like them to be in close proximity to the owner’s home. But we also like to convey to them that there are success stories where it could take some time. They could be found far away. At the end of the day, we do have success finding pets in these unusual circumstances.”
This story is from SummitDaily.com.
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