Lost !

Hi folks, this is Bill with Bridging Borders. Thanks for joining me today. Well, today's video is about loss and hope and activities and emotions that go with both those things. It's about the loss of a cat and while that may sound a little over the top, for those of you who travel in your RV with pets, I think that some of you may identify with what we've gone through here. So stay with me. It all began during the early COVID days when we were self-quarantining on Vancouver Island in British Columbia after returning from Mexico. We were moochdocking on our friend's beautiful five-acre farm. We had a pasture to ourselves. We had some chores that we could help with with the house. We relaxed with our friend Bruce, shown here with my wife Michaela. It was just lovely. We traveled with our cats Boogie and Squeaky. Squeaky, the orange one, being the troublesome one. Well, on August 15th, just a few days before we planned to leave, it happened. Squeaky got out of the rear bedroom window at about 5 a.m. in the morning while we were sleeping. We had left the screen open and he was gone. I know, you're probably saying, hey, it's a cat. He'll come back. No, not Squeaky. You gotta know Squeaky. He's a Mexican feral cat. When he hits the ground, he's gone. And we knew that. He's a very determined little guy. He actually scaled a six-meter palm tree, about 18 feet, in order to get onto the deck of our home in Mexico because he was so desperate after his mother was sadly killed. And he's been with us ever since. We just couldn't give up on the little guy. So we created posters. We walked the neighborhood day and night. And thank goodness for the CatSpan registered charity of Nanuse Bay who kindly gave us traps and cameras and food. It was a blessing. We had cameras on fence posts. We had cameras on telephone poles, on buildings. I became quite a nuisance. People, I think, were afraid to move because they knew that I was probably going to catch them on camera. But hey, I'm looking for my cat. Being a Mexican feral street cat, we just had no idea how far Squeaky might go. It was a real crapshoot. Michaela and Boogie would come out to help. Boogie, a blood relative of Squeaky's, was useless. We looked for Squeaky every day. I checked the trap lines every day, the cameras, and nothing. So by late October, all that I had caught was this cat and I caught this cat and I caught this cat. I caught this cat. I caught this dog twice. It was our friend's dog. And I caught his cat as well. Why not? I had traps everywhere. I had traps in fields. I had traps in people's yards. I just tried everything. I caught three raccoons and a sea otter. Who catches a freaking sea otter? During all of this time, we had a very strong lead in October of an orange cat about three kilometers, so roughly two miles away, which was quite a distance. But we thought, no, that's doable. Squeaky could get down to that area. And a very kind person who had security cameras around his property had caught images of this orange cat. It was out of place. It hadn't been seen in the neighborhood before. So we thought this could be Squeaky. And with the help of a beautiful family with their two kids, it became quite a family project for a couple of weeks, tracking this animal. And one day I got a call from another neighbor nearby who said, look, I've seen this cat. Let's go get it. And I met him. He was there with a fishnet. And he told me where it was. I managed to trap the cat and it wasn't Squeaky. It was such a disappointment. And that really deflated us. We thought, you know what? There's a good chance we're not going to find Squeaky. We just had that one moment of despair. But it did hit us hard. So after the Charlie episode, Charlie being the cat that wasn't Squeaky, and it was two and a half months since we lost Squeaky, all I had produced was 11 wrong cats, one dog, three raccoons, and a sea otter, and a really bad reputation with the SPCA. We continued to look for Squeaky into November, but by the middle of November, which was three full months since Squeaky went missing, we realized that we really needed to get to our home on Southern Vancouver Island. So with a heavy heart, we packed up our gear, we washed the cages to be returned to the Catspan Registered Charity, and we planned on returning everything the next day and returned home. We were sitting in our motorhome that evening with our friend Bruce to thank him for letting us mooched off for all this time. And would you believe it? We received a text with a picture of what could be an orange cat in a horse pasture not very far away. We dropped everything. It was unbelievable. It was too late. It was too dark to go that night. But the next morning, we went and met the owners of the property. They were very kind to us. They allowed us to put cameras and traps on the property. The fuzzy image had come to us on day 90, and it took us another 10 days before we captured an image of our own of Squeaky, confirming that it was him. You just never know until you see a coloured image on the camera. So that was day 100 when we finally confirmed that it was Squeaky. It took us two more days to coax him into a trap. And on the 102nd day since his departure, since he ran away, we captured Squeaky. It was July and hot, and we had just arrived at the Arrowvale Farm and Campground in the Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island. It was peaceful and serene. We had Boogie and Squeaky with us. Life was so good. And then it happened. I foolishly left the slider on the screen door open, and within seconds, Squeaky was gone again. Unbelievable. How could I do that? How can I do these things? Okay, here we go again. Day four. Oh, sign is Squeaky. Well, I don't think I even have to tell you what came next. You're pros by now. You know, out came the posters, walking the grounds, talking with campers, setting up cameras. I mean, we had all the gear, and it was beautiful. But it was so expansive. I mean, this is a really large farm in a remote area along a riverbank. It's pretty thick in there. But you know, what's time? I'm out looking for Squeaky, but look at this beautiful field that I found. It's hard not to just stop and look. So this is day 10 searching for Squeaky. Boy, it's pretty wild in here. This path extended away from our site for about 60 meters, so roughly 200 feet. And it just seemed like a likely pathway for Squeaky. But you know, so did every other pathway, a piece of bush. So it was just such a crapshoot. Even our granddaughter came out to help us look, but we just had no luck at all. Aside from a camera sighting one week and three weeks after he went missing, there were no other sightings during July. Those sightings were on the very pathway that I thought he might be on, but no other sightings. I guess he was just out having a good time. For all of you who own pets, the toughest thing to do is to leave a campground with a pet behind. Just coming out from the campground area up to the office, wait for Michaela and our little tow car, and we'll be on our way. So while we returned home at the beginning of August for the birth of our granddaughter and appointments, I returned every week to check the cameras and just talk to campers and just see if there was any activities, sightings of Squeaky. And on one of my return trips, I caught this image on camera of this guy eating a tree or taking something off a tree. Who eats a tree? And who's out in the public in your pajamas around noon in a public campground? This guy scared the hell out of me, but he was the highlight of my trip. So during August and September, I did whatever it took to go up once a week, and sometimes I camped. At one point, I borrowed my son's pup tent that I bought him about 30 years ago, and some days I just went up for the day, other days I stayed overnight. Well, whatever. Posters again. It just did what it took. Our spirits were high, we were hopeful, and it gave us a chance to see some of our favourite spots along the way in the fall weather, like the Parksville dump station, and our favourite farm market, Silver Meadows in Arrington. Okay, so I will just jump out of the door again. This is how much we love this place. I'll be okay. Mommy! Safe here. You're safe here, sweetie. You're okay, bubby.