Cat believed lost in wildfire turns up 52 days later, safe and sound!

Ester Spye was desperately trying to call her cat, Socks, from under the bed while an out of control wildfire approached her home.

“He wouldn’t come out,” she said. “Everyone was screaming at me to go.”

Spye was forced to leave Socks behind as the fire raged forward, and she hurried into the pickup that would drive her to safety. She took her dogs with her and left the door open to give Socks a chance to escape. She was convinced that Socks, her companion for 17 years, had died in the fire that consumed her house on the Ashcroft Band reserve on July 7.

cat returns safe after wildfire
via Vancouver Sun

“That’s what really hurt my heart, where I had to leave home without my cat,” she said Wednesday from a motel in Cache Creek.

52 days had passed when she got a call from her niece, Shirley Wilson, who was also her neighbor.

Wilson and her sister were sitting in her house, which had been spared by the fire, when they heard a noise outside. Wilson went to the front door, opened it, and there was Socks on her doorstep.

“He just sat there. It shocked the hell out of me,” she said.

Wilson called Spye to tell her the good news and Spye couldn’t believe it. She rushed over to see for herself.

“I was so excited to see him, my heart was just pounding 90 miles an hour. I grabbed him and rubbed him, he was licking my face,” she said, crying as she recalled the moment.

cat returns safe after wildfire
via Vancouver Sun

“I was so worried about him. All the time I cried, and cried, and cried. He was just living around somewhere. I don’t know what the devil he did for 52 days.”

Socks looked totally fine and had no evidence that he was touched by the fire.

Spye’s is one of many stories this wildfire season involving remarkable pets.

When Spye’s niece, Angie Thorne, returned home two days after the fire she found that her home on the reserve, where she had lived for 21 years, had been destroyed.

As she and her family surveyed the damage, her granddaughter’s cat, Mittens, showed up! The seven-month-old cat had survived the fire, her blackened and curled whiskers evidence of how close she got to the flames.

B.C. SPCA senior animal protection officer Eileen Drever spent about two weeks in Williams Lake helping local SPCA staff care for animals that were left behind when people were forced to evacuate.

“It’s very, very traumatic for people having to go through that, never mind worrying about their home ,” she said. “I can’t imagine what they went through.”

To date, 431 structures throughout B.C. have been destroyed by wildfires — 212 in the northeast, 214 in the central part of the province, and five in the southeast — 220 of which were homes.

cat returns safe after wildfire 3
via Vancouver Sun