It seems the Force was with Anakin.
The 15-month-old, domestic black-and-white cat who bolted from his carrier eight days ago on a trip to the veterinarian has clawed his way back home.
It must have been an arduous journey as he’s a little worse for wear, said owner Christine Hill, a longtime Newmarket resident. He’s thinner than when he started out, appears to have frostbite on one paw, and the pads of his paws are rough and peeling, she added.
But the Jedi in him defied all odds as he made his way back to their Leslie Street and Davis Drive home from several kilometres away to be at the side of Hill’s daughter, Rosie, 12, who shares a special bond with the cat that came back.
Anakin is a natural at being a service cat, Hill said, although he has no formal training of the kind that dogs receive. He comforts and calms, and provides unconditional love to Rosie, who has a genetic, neuromuscular condition known as Leigh disease.
“It’s certainly the power of cats,” Hill said, her voice hoarse from exhaustion and stress over the near 24-7 search for Anakin. “He can sense when my daughter is going to have a seizure or even when she’s feeling a little bit off. But it’s the small seizures, when Anakin will just go and lie on her and it reminds her to calm down.”
Just before 9 p.m. on Jan. 16, Hill went out to her vehicle to get the live trap that a friend offered to monitor that night. It was one of a variety of efforts that Hill, friends and neighbours and even strangers, carried out in the search for Anakin.
Hill said she heard a meow coming from the bushes in front of her home, and she called out to the pet by his nickname: “I said, ‘baby boy?’ And he meowed again and came out from the bushes, behind the chair, and there he was at the door.”
Rosie had fallen asleep on the couch, crying herself to sleep that night.
“I walked in the door and I just yelled, ‘He’s home’!” Hill said. “I could tell Rosie was thinking, ‘Am I dreaming this’? When she saw him she just started to bawl. We all gathered around him, petting him and crying, and I was squealing.”
Anakin was desperately trying to get to the ledge where the food was kept.
“That’s really what he wanted,” Hill said with a laugh, for the first in more than a week. “I was starting to lose hope and he arrived at the perfect time. He’s a regular cat, it’s just that there’s no other way to define him than a service cat to my daughter. That he’s a great cat doesn’t speak to his actual value in our house.”
Hill allowed Rosie to stay from school yesterday morning to spend some time with Anakin, and when her young daughter bounced up the walkway headed to class, she’s never looked so happy, Hill said.
“I’m on such a high right now,” Hill said. “So many people in the community helped so much, and that he found his way home from an area he didn’t know still shocks me.”
Anakin was on his way to a follow-up veterinarian appointment for a burst abscess on his left side Jan. 8 after having been neutered and microchipped the previous day.
Somehow, the cat managed to unlatch the carrier gate and escaped across the parking lot at Mulock and College Manor drives.
What ensued was a herculean effort to find the feline, led by Hill and the community at large.
Volunteers signed up en masse to help Hill with her Knock and Talk, Door-to-Door campaign, the Bring Anakin Home! Facebook group was set up, concerned citizens laid out an empty box with blankets on their porches to provide a warm place to nestle should Anakin make his way there.
And self-professed animal communicators and psychic/mediums from around the world contacted Hill to offer their insights, after news of the lost service animal shared widely on social media reached far and wide.
“Many were suggesting he was taken in and was with a family and I was really scared that was happening,” said Hill, admitting she embarked on some wild goose chases that are too humiliating to talk about now. “I was listening to anything and I followed every lead.”
Nearby local business, Vince’s Market, where Anakin was lost, reviewed its security camera footage for sightings of Anakin and the direction in which he headed.
Finally, Hill hired the services of a pet tracker, who detected Anakin’s scent at some locations in Newmarket but, ultimately, that proved unsuccessful.
Now that Anakin is home and Rosie and Hill’s other three children are happy and content, the mom who never relented in her search for the family kitty can finally take a cat nap.
