For more than a year, Leanne Owens and daughter Hayden had no idea where their cat, Blue, went.
Until recently.
“Shocked. There’s no other way to put it,” explained Leanne after learning Blue was found safe and sound.
Blue disappeared from their Colwood home on Boxing Day of 2018. Leanne reported the missing pet to Reuniting Owners with Animals Missing (ROAM), an organization that helps find lost pets on Vancouver Island.
“Like a lot of cases there is no resolution, there is no solution, but we never stop looking,” said ROAM Co-Founder Lesli Steeves.
Earlier this month, a man from the Point Ellis House in downtown Victoria, spotted Blue and notified ROAM, who immediately recognized the cat’s special colouring.
“We looked at this cat’s face and his face is so distinctive, he’s got a mark on his face, and we all went, ‘Oh this could be him,’ and bingo, it was Blue,” said Steeves.
She immediately called Leanne and sent her two text messages that were two photos of Blue, one from when he went missing back in 2018, and one current photo taken by the man who spotted Blue.
Leanne’s texted “OMG that’s him!!!”
After 18 months away from home, Blue had been found safe and sound.“About six, nine months in I started losing hope, but Hayden never did.” recalled Leanne, who was still in shock her cat was found. “She was always talking about him, for the entire year and a half that he was gone. It’s like she knew he’d be back one day.”
And it turns out Hayden was right.
After a year and a half, Blue was back at his Colwood home.
“I said ‘hi Blue.’ Then he came crawling out immediately. He knew exactly who I was the second I called him,” said Leanne, recalling the moment she reunited with the cat.
Although Blue had been missing for such a long time, the family says his timing was perfect.
“We had just decided finally after a year and a half to get another kitten, so I had lined that up with someone and it fell through, literally, days before the text from ROAM that he had been found,” said Leanne. “It was fate.”
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