There are many missing pet stories, some with a heart-warming ending of a tearful reunion between the owner and his beloved animal.
For a Tilbury couple, who were able to make the holidays brighter for one women, the story starts at their home.
Retirees Doreen and Jim Stonehouse take in stray cats, taking care of their medical needs and then adopting them out. This past summer, however, Doreen said they found a black and white kitten they named Beau that they took in, and it got along well with their cat, Mike.
A few months had passed with Beau fitting in nicely at their house, when one day, Jim brought home several community newspapers for Doreen to read, including one from Amherstburg dated Nov. 23.
In the paper was a missing cat ad with a photo that looked identical to Beau, the cat they had found back in the summer. The ad indicated the kitten had been lost the first week of August from a cottage on Lakewood Drive near Amherstburg.
“I looked at the picture in the ad then at Beau and they had the same markings, down to the black spot on his nose,” Doreen said. “I knew that had to be the missing cat, but we couldn’t figure out how he would have gotten from there to here in Tilbury.”
The very next day, Nov. 24, Doreen called the number on the ad and left a message, explaining she may have the missing cat in the ad.
A day later, a very excited woman named Carolyn phoned back, and she made plans to be there as soon as she could to pick up the cat.
“I thought she was coming from the Amherstburg area, but as time went on she still wasn’t there,” Doreen explained. “She finally showed and said she had trouble getting to us as the border guard she asked didn’t know how to get to Tilbury. The owner was actually from Michigan!”
Carolyn Abney, from Southfield, Mich. had been on summer holiday when her cat went missing, but she didn’t give up looking for him, placing the ad in the paper in hopes that someone might find him, a cat she had named Sweetie.
“Beau knew her and wasn’t afraid of her. She was so happy to see him and she ended up calling him Sweetie-Beau after the name we gave him,” Doreen said. “She was just sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with her family, and left, telling them to go ahead and eat, but she was going to get her cat.”
The Stonehouses were very pleased to be able to give Abney a happy ending and a much brighter holiday. They will continue to rescue cats and find them loving homes.
