Scott Swanson
After disappearing in 2003, tough tom crawls back into rescuer’s life
Mary Anne Miller was feeding her cats one night in late October when an emaciated gold-and-white tom crept to the feeder.
He looked vaguely familiar and, as she took a closer look, she could scarcely believe her eyes.
The cat was one she had tried to adopt nine years earlier, which had then disappeared without a trace.
“I figured the coyotes or raccoons had gotten him,” she said. “We’d given up hope.”
Miller operates CATS, Inc. (Caring About The Strays), a feline sanctuary on Highway 20 about three miles west of Sweet Home (see page 11).
The big tom first snuck into Miller’s back yard at feeding time in October 2003. He took over.
“He successfully drove the other cats away from the food, leaving him to eat his fill undisturbed,” Miller said. “Afterwards, he slipped off into the night.”
A few days after his initial appearance, the big tom was back and, within a few days, Miller managed to trap him – after he’d sprayed a row of garbage bags full of raked leaves. She took him to a veterinary clinic to get him neutered.
Back home, she tried to implement the vet’s instructions that the cat remain quiet for the next week.
“No one informed him of this rule,” she said. “The minute the trap opened, he exploded into the room. Bouncing off tables, knocking over chairs and racing up the wall, he started running repeated laps over my head near the ceiling! I was amazed that he didn’t stroke-out on me. I backed out of the room.”
Miller named him Cyclone.
“I think what made him stand out was his wild ways when he first arrived,” she said. “He was the first cat in all the years of my rescuing that ran up the walls and started running frantically just under the ceiling, like a track star on an Olympic track!
“Some cats will hit the walls repeatedly in their fright, but he has been the only one who actually ran the laps over my head.”
Cyclone lived up to his name.
“Any time I entered the room, he became a whirling dervish; captivity was not to his liking,” she said.
Eventually, he pried off a plastic trellis the Millers had protecting the window screen, and escaped over the rooftops. He reappeared three weeks later severely injured.
“He crawled on his belly under our gate and laid there,” she said. “He’d been in a serious confrontation. I nursed him back to health.”
By that September, a calmer Cyclone joined the other house cats, but even though he was neutered, he was still a “formidable, very alpha” cat, she said. “He was a pretty unique boy.
“The other cats were scared of him. One look from him would send most of the others scattering to the wind.”
Then, a month later, Cyclone simply vanished.
“ I posted flyers, rang doorbells, flashed photos, yet no one claimed to have seen him,” Miller said. “He was gone.”
Fast-forward to last month when he reappeared out of the night.
“The distinct markings on his face and the patterned coat gave him away visible even under his gaunt and dirty appearance,” she said.
Approaching him, she said she spoke to him softly.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Miller said. “I’d given him up for lost.
“Raising his head slowly, he gave one silent meow then collapsed. I gathered him into my arms, his loose skin hung off the sides of his body.”
Alarmed, she took him inside and gave him an examination.
“Every bone on his back bulged against his almost transparent skin. His tailbone protruded awkwardly. No visible fat or muscle appeared anywhere on his body.”
Miller set him up in a large cage with blankets, a heating pad, food and kitty litter, and began giving the cat subcutaneous fluids to correct or prevent dehydration.
“I turned him quickly into a sprinkler every time,” she said. “Every piece of food I offered to him he gobbled up eagerly, so I added water with every morsel.”
A veterinarian the next day diagnosed Cyclone with anemia, dehydration and a severe upper respiratory infection.
The vet, who had performed Cyclone’s neutering operation in 2003, was amazed when Miller told him it was the same cat.
In three weeks he shot up from four pounds to nine as she fed him several times a day – canned cat food, dry food and “safe” human food.
Cyclone has calmed down considerably, Miller said. He now spends his days sleeping, eating and hanging out on her porch in an enclosure that Miller said she and friends hastily constructed to give him space away from other cats. He enjoys snuggling up next to her on the “sacrificial” sofa (“also known as the main scratching post”) that he grudgingly shares with some of the other cats.
His face is battle-scarred and he has age spots on his nose. She figures he was 3 when they first met, so that makes him about 12 now. He’s also very concerned when he sees a broom.
“People often use brooms or hoses to scare away stray cats,” she said.
But otherwise, Miller said, the cat “is really doing well.”
“His body is slowly transforming to the cat I know him to be.” she said. “My Prodigal Cyclone has returned.
“What I feel honored about in talking about Cyclone is that he remembered ME,” she said. “He knew he was in trouble and he came back to a home he remembered that treated him with kindness. That makes what I do so worthwhile, to earn the trust of such a stubborn stray.
“I just want to give cat owners hope this holiday season that you should never give up when it comes to cats being outside.”