The cat came back, although it wasn’t exactly the very next day. A Lower Lonsdale kitty survived more than three weeks locked in an empty suite.
Joanna Knowles was having some renovations done to her third-floor condo on East Fourth Street when her four-year-old cat Tia disappeared Oct. 1.
Knowles searched for Tia and put up flyers around the neighbourhood but the disappearance remained a mystery. For the first week, her other cat Toby was frantically running around the house and crying out from the balcony where Knowles suspects Tia jumped or fell from.
“They are such good buddies. They snuggle together. They play a lot together. He was really missing him. That really broke my heart to see him as distraught as he was,” Knowles said
To comfort herself, Knowles painted a picture in her mind of Tia being taken in and cared for by another family. Then, on Oct. 24 – 23 days since she last saw him – Knowles got a shocking call from a new neighbour. “I got a phone call from some woman in the building who was just moving in and he was in her bathtub. I believe the suite had been vacant for a long time,” she said.
Tia was “freaked out” when they discovered him, hissing and spitting. “He lost a lot of weight, obviously. I would assume he was drinking out of the toilet bowl because there was a very strong smell of cat urine down there,” Knowles said.
Eventually, Tia calmed down and Knowles picked him up, which was followed by more familiar purrs. “He was really happy to be home,” she said.
Knowles had Tia checked over by a vet and who gave him a clean bill of health. “It still kind of boggles my mind that he was in such good shape other than the weight loss,” she said.
Knowles said she was impressed by the response from her local community, with upset neighbours out searching for Tia and knocking on doors. “As distraught as I was, I was feeling very well supported. People were obviously really understanding that it’s part of your family,” she said.
That goes especially so for the downstairs neighbour who reunited Knowles and Tia.
“I’m just so grateful that woman showed up when she did because had she not been moving in, there’s no way I ever would have known. ‘Welcome to the neighbourhood. Sorry your new suite smells like cat urine,’” she added with a laugh. “I’ve actually talked to her several times since. She was amazing.”
