Jennifer Leigh Thompson was devasted when, in 2007, her beloved cat Pilot left one day and never came back.
“He was an indoor-outdoor cat that always came home every evening like clockwork,” Thompson said. “He was microchipped and was wearing a collar with a tag. He is a very special cat who loved my kids, loved to play in water, and followed us around like a dog. His disappearance was extremely traumatizing for us.”
The Thompson family looked for Pilot for months, but they eventually accepted that he may not be alive. In 2010, the family left their Santa Rose home and moved to Longmont, Colorado. Although they still missed Pilot, as time passed, they began to heal.
In October of 2017, when a host of wildfires ravaged Southern California, Thompson debated adopting a rescue. “I was telling one of my friends out here, ‘I feel like I should adopt one of these cats,’ because there were so many,” Thompson recalled. “We lost a cat to cancer last spring and I’ve been telling my husband, ‘We have a vacancy.'”
Soon after having this thought though, Thompson received an unexpected phone call from a Santa Rosa veterinary clinic. They told her Pilot was alive and had been safely located. It had now been 10 YEARS since he’d originally disappeared.
Pilot had been discovered by a Good Samaritan on Halloween night. He had suffered extensive burns from the wildfires, but he was still alive. When the Good Samaritan brought Pilot to the Petcare Veterinary Clinic in Santa Rosa, medical staff scanned for a microchip. This is when the Thompson family received the surprising call.
“I never in a million years imagined that we’d ever see him again,” Thompson told Mercury News. “I’m so fortunate to have close friends who work at Petcare, where he’s hospitalized. They have been keeping me updated and giving him lots of love.”
Pilot was in extremely bad shape, having suffered serious burns, some going all the way down to the bone. Vet staff suspect he was actually burned 2 weeks prior, during the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa. If so, the fact that he managed to survive two whole weeks in such a sad condition, is even more shocking and impressive. “It’s amazing he survived all that,” Thompson said. “I just have so much gratitude.”
“I have no doubt that Pilot remembers me,” she told The Sacramento Bee. “I will never, ever forget that moment. He was asleep and he woke up and whipped his head around as soon as he heard my voice.”
While Pilot was getting healthy enough to come home, Thompson started a GoFundMe to help pay for his medical expenses and the trip to bring him back to Colorado. The family’s goal was $3,000, an amount they more than doubled.
After a decade’s worth of adventures and some pretty horrific injuries, Pilot, the 13-year-old cat, has now safely returned home to the Thompson family home. Although he’s a bit older, he has the same great personality and loves being back at home.
“We are so happy to have him back,” Thompson said. “He’s just as sweet as he always was and he doesn’t leave my side at night.”
“It’s been amazing to see him start to blossom. He’s truly a miracle.”
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