John Jefferson
Hundreds of miles of wilderness and the looming threat of predators couldn’t keep a California cat from returning to its family.
Rayne Beau — pronounced like “rainbow” — is a two-year-old feline that disappeared in June after he ran off into the woods during a family trip to Yellowstone National Park.
Now — three months and more than 800 miles later — the little cat has been reunited with his owners.
Benny and Susanne Anguiano, Rayne Beau’s owners, spent nearly their entire trip to the national park searching for their lost cat. Benny doused himself with bear spray and wandered the woods calling out for the cat, and the couple even used the calls of Rayne Beau’s twin sister, Starr Jasmine, to try to draw the feline out of the woods, USA Today reports.
None of their efforts were successful, and after days of searching their reservations at the park expired. Knowing they couldn’t stay indefinitely, the couple left the park devastated. Rangers assured them that if they spotted the cat they’d call, but they feared they would never see their pet again.
Adding to the despair was the fact that their other cat, Starr Jasmine, was struggling to cope with the loss of her sibling.
Despite the brutal sadness that comes with losing a pet, nature provided one apt sign suggesting that, perhaps, Rayne Beau was going to be ok: Susanne saw a double rainbow as they entered Idaho, and she knew that somewhere her cat was “being taken care of.”
That eventually turned out to be true. Three months later the family received a call from a shelter telling them they’d found Rayne Beau. The couple was skeptical at first, initially thinking it was a scam or a misidentification, and guarded themselves from getting their hopes up.
“I said, ‘take a picture. I want to make sure I don’t drive three-and-a-half hours and it’s not my cat,” Benny told USA Today. “So they did. About 20 minutes later, they sent a picture and yep, it was him.”
Even after seeing the photo, however, the family was still skeptical. They couldn’t bear the feeling of losing their cat for a second time, so they managed their expectations and prepared for the worst.
Upon arrival at the Placer SPCA animal shelter in Roseville, California, all of those reservations were washed away — when they saw the cat, they knew it was their Rayne Beau.
“When we for sure knew, we were in tears. We were all hugging and crying,” Susanne said.
Rayne Beau was microchipped, which aided the shelter in locating his owners, according to Susanne.
The cat had survived its long journey from Yellowstone to Roseville — approximately 834 miles — but not without complications. Rayne Beau had lost nearly half his body weight, his paws were dried and cracked, and he was malnourished due to a lack of proper nutrition during his time in the wilderness.
Susanne said his weight loss and lack of nutrition suggested to her that he had not been found or cared for during his time away and had been out in the woods for most of his journey.
After some time recovering, Rayne Beau is now at a healthy weight and is back to sleeping and playing with his sister and his new housemate Maxx, who the family adopted to keep Starr Jasmine company in her brother’s absence.
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