G.G. is ready to go home.
For the past few weeks, the orange tabby has been staying in a beach house on Long Lake — which sounds pretty nice, but it’s not where he belongs, and he misses his family.
“I have 23 cats in my house right now, so I’ve been keeping him down there, separate from the rest,” said Debbie Willmott, a veteran cat rescuer and fosterer. “He’s good but he’s living by himself and he’s getting lonely.”
The young feline was spotted in Warren in late-September, lurking around a property near the Trans-Canada.
Resident Lynn Sovinsky “saw him on her driveway, close to the highway, and she was, like, ‘no, no, don’t go there,’” said Willmott. “The cat disappeared, but the next morning she found him sitting on her quad in a little lean-to. So she went and fed him and told her friends about it, and her friends sent her a post about this missing cat.”
Cats, of course, go missing all the time. Everyone’s seen a poster — sadly faded, in many cases — on a lamppost or, as happens more these days, a picture at an online forum for lost pets.
The unique part of G.G.’s story is just how far he’d strayed from his home. The cat hails from Port Renfrew, a remote town on Vancouver Island.
Not that he’d travelled 4,000-plus kilometres on foot. The tabby escaped from a vehicle bound for the East Coast and only ambled a short distance, as it would turn out, before finding someone to love him up.
That wasn’t clear to his distraught owners, however, for several weeks.
Raven TerHorst said she and her partner, George, were on their way to New Brunswick to visit her mom, and had brought along both G.G. and their dog, a bloodhound named Lucy. The two animals — fast friends — were sharing the back of the couple’s Jeep, along with a pile of camping gear, with G.G. generally enclosed in a soft carrier.
G.G., however, is a bit of a badass — he is named after the punk singer G.G. Allin, after all — and known for pulling some stunts. “He’ll hang off our door handles at home, open the door and let the bloodhound out,” said TerHorst. “He’s a real troublemaker.”
In this case, he evidently wriggled out of his carrier somehow, stepped on the window button and — when the Jeep had rolled to a stop — leapt out.
Neither TerHorst nor her partner saw this happen, but they intuited as much when they reached Sturgeon Falls and noticed the window was open and the cat was no longer in the SUV.
Earlier they had stopped in Massey, hoping to camp at Chutes Provincial Park (which turned out to be full), and wondered if he’d hopped out there. They had also stopped to gas up in Warren — another possible escape point.
“It turned out to be that exact gas station, but we backtracked all the way to Chutes Provincial Park to look for him,” said TerHorst. They spent that night in a motel and kept looking the next day, with no luck, then continued east, looking again around Warren and Sturgeon Falls for the errant kitty, again with no success.
Finally, they gave up and continued, despondent, to New Brunswick, while sharing an image of G.G. on Facebook groups for the North Shore, Sudbury and Nipissing.
Nothing came of this immediately — although they did learn G.G. has a virtual twin in the area — but the couple did not give up hope. They also cut their visit to the East Coast short, leaving after just three days.
“I was just heartbroken and I was talking to Debbie already, who was setting out live traps in all the places we had been, so I was like, we’re going back for him,” said TerHorst. “We retraced our steps and tried shaking treats everywhere. We looked for him for several days.”
It wan’t until they were back on the West Coast — the day they reached Vancouver, in fact — that they got the good news about G.G.’s whereabouts.
“It was a happy day, that’s for sure,” said TerHorst. “We were exhausted, and it was really good way to end the trip, because I was so upset.”
There’s no doubt that the cat found in these parts is theirs, she said, as he was identifiable by his red harness, plus has a tattoo in his ear.
“You gotta love social media — so many people came together on the internet, and if it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t have got him,” said TerHorst. “People love cats. It’s amazing.”
Willmott put two and two together after seeing the posts and contacted TerHorst to let her know the cat had been found. She then met Sovinsky in Coniston to pick up G.G. and take him in until arrangements could be made to get him back to B.C.
That moment is now fast approaching, as the cat has been booked for a flight on Friday. Willmott and her partner Steve are going to drive him down to Pearson Airport in Toronto, where he’ll get loaded into a heated cargo area, and TerHorst will be hopping on a ferry to greet him in Vancouver.
“I’m so excited, and so grateful,” said the cat owner. “Everybody in the Sudbury area came together, I got so many messages. Debbie is an angel and Lynn, the woman who found him, was amazing, too. She kept him for a couple of days, and Debbie was quick on the draw, she was there in a heartbeat.”
G.G. is a “special” cat, the owner said, in a couple of senses of the word. She got him only because he was the one member of a litter that no-one else seemed to want.
“This kitten was returned because he was the defect,” she said. “The girl who had him didn’t like him because he was orange and kind of weird. He was launching himself on dogs, falling over, doing strange things. I said, ‘Do you want any money for him?’ and she said, ‘I just don’t want you to bring him back.’ ”
G.G. has no physical issues but could be said to be on the spectrum. “He is a little bit, like, a genius,” said the owner. “But then sometimes he’s not a genius.”
While TerHorst and her partner will be thrilled to have him back, the happiest member of the household may well be Lucy, their long-eared rescue mutt.
“We can’t even say his name or she starts whining,” said TerHorst. “It’s a bit like the elephant and the mouse; she’s scared of her own shadow, and G.G.’s kind of her protector. He’s our dog’s support animal.”