Written by Stacey Keppler
Professional photography by elysian
In the early hours of the morning of the 8th of September 2022, our chubby old tabby, Zenn, woke my partner, Lilli, and I with his caterwauling outside our bedroom. I was still half asleep and not wearing my glasses, so I wagged my finger at Zenn and told him not to be mean to his sister, Pixel, a Maine Coon, who was now “chilling” in the laundry, quite unfazed by Zenn’s empty vocal threats. Then
Lilli said: “Stacey, that’s not Pixel…”
For a brief moment, my next half-asleep thought was that it was Meeko, our Maine Coon that had passed away from a brain tumour the year prior. Only then did I realise that I was being ridiculous, and that, of course, it was a completely different cat! That penny took far too long to drop, but I just thought, what are the chances that a Maine Coon found its way into a Maine Coon lover’s house to look for help?
Maine Coon mystery
I posted on the necessary social platforms, with many people advising that the cat wasn’t lost because he was in such good condition and I should just let him go. But two things stopped me from doing so:
1) Pixel had gone missing six years prior for four nights, and it was so traumatic that I wanted to spare anyone else that anguish;
2) I’d been on our body corporate for five years and know the community quite well. If there was a pet application for a Maine Coon, I would have fielded it, or I would have seen this handsome boy on my walks. So, either this was an indoor boy from one of the neighbouring complexes or he was new to the area.
So, I followed my gut, ignored the social media advice, and kept him occupied in our laundry room until morning. However, he turned out to be quite the Houdini! It pains me to admit, but he’s significantly smarter than Zenn or Pixel… He could jump at the door handle to pull it down and would then feel the bottom corner with his paw to see if he could pull it open and then repeat. He could also open the windows (and there are six in our laundry), so my only option was to distract him with a string wand toy for hours whilst Pixel meowed at the other side of the door with FOMO.
It was quite cold and, eventually at about 7AM, I thought maybe he’d lie on the bed with me (there’s a spare single bed in our laundry). So I lay down, patted the bed, and he spooned with me for the last hour, as if we’d been best pals for years. We had the sweetest little catnap until 8AM, when Lilli popped her head in to say it was go time!
He’d come a long way
We loaded him into the cat box and Lilli took him to receptionist Kirsty Macdonald at CitiVet Gardens to check for a microchip. Thank goodness, his owner had been responsible and he was microchipped!
It turned out that his name is Cooper and he lives in Durbanville, over 30 kilometres away! Kirsty rang up his owner who said that he’d been missing for one-and-a-half years – she couldn’t believe that he’d been found. His owner said that she was nine months pregnant and Kirsty joked that she shouldn’t go into labour from surprise but it really was her boy, Cooper. We later found out that she also has Cooper’s biological brother.
Lilli and Kirsty called me with the great news and the three of us felt like absolute heroes. Kirsty kept Cooper at Citi Vet Gardens until his owner could get from Durbanville to Gardens and reunited them with great glee!
We still don’t know where Cooper had been and who’d looked after him in the interim. His fur was a bit shorter than normal, as if he’d been shaved about a year and a bit ago and his hair was growing out. He was clearly being brushed daily and fed a balanced diet because his coat was silky. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was found/rescued in a bit of a state, shaved to get rid of the matted fur and, because he’s so lovely, maybe the “interim” owner chose to not check for a microchip, or perhaps they simply didn’t know about microchips. I wish he could tell us the tale of these last 16 months, but what is important is that he’s back with his biological brother, human brother, parents and a new baby to love!
June Wahl, Cooper’s owner, shares...
We got our two beautiful Maine Coon cats in August of 2018. Murphy and Cooper. Although they’re brothers, they don’t look alike at all and have very different personalities. We used to call Murphy the beauty and Cooper the brain. Cooper is also very beautiful, but he’s very affectionate, smart, and playful. We would throw one of his toys and he’d run to fetch and bring it back.
As we didn’t want them to roam, my extremely handy husband cat-proofed our back yard himself. Fortunately, our yard isn’t very big. As the two got older, I decided to let them out into our complex as it’s very small with only five houses. They’d walk between the houses and either come back on their own or I’d go and call them back into the house. For more than two years we never had any problems.
Cooper flies the coop
One evening, however, I called them and Cooper didn’t come. My husband eventually went to look for him, and – lo and behold – there was Cooper lying in the grass… outside the complex. This was worrisome to us as we didn’t want them going outside the complex, so we decided that they were no longer allowed outside if it was getting dark.
On the 16th of June 2021, my husband went cycling and came back around noon. He was in and out of the house with the front door open and the two cats then also went outside. I, however, didn’t realise they were outside until I heard Murphy meowing by the door. I opened the door for him, not realising that Cooper was also outside.
A few hours later I noticed that I hadn’t seen Cooper in a while. This was not unusual – they sometimes find strange places to sleep in the house and I just assumed he was lying somewhere hidden – but I started looking for him anyway. I looked and looked but couldn’t find him. That’s when I realised that he must have gone outside with Murphy and was still out there. I couldn’t find him in the complex either. I was really worried at this point, particularly knowing he’d gone outside the complex a few nights prior. I walked outside the complex in search of him, but to no avail. I posted on our community WhatsApp group that neighbours should please be on the look-out for him and spent the rest of the day searching. Eventually, I gave up and simply hoped that he’d return during the night.
He didn’t. The next few days were spent walking around our neighbourhood, hunting desperately for Cooper. We looked in bushes, drains, trees and anywhere else we could think of, but there was no sign of him.
Desperately seeking Cooper
By this time, I’d posted his picture on Facebook, printed posters and put them up all over our area and sent emails to all the local vets and animal shelters.
People walking outside at night obviously draw the attention of armed response companies. A few asked us what was going on and we told them that we were looking for our cat. One of the security personnel was extremely helpful and asked me to send him a picture of Cooper, which he then circulated on various security WhatsApp groups.
Our area has many security cameras in the streets which are monitored by one of the security companies. Cooper’s plight came to the attention of one of the personnel at this company and she’d regularly send me videos of cats triggering these cameras, especially at night. I would tell her “no, that one is too small to be Cooper”, or “his tail isn’t long enough”. Until one night when she sent me a video from a street about three kilometres from our house. Even though I couldn’t be 100% sure, it looked a lot like Cooper. That specific area has a lot of open spaces and a park.
I printed more posters and put them up in the area where he’d (possibly) been spotted. I walked in that area almost every day calling him. One day, I received a phone call from a lady who thought she saw him, but he ran away when she approached. This gave me more hope and I spent more days just walking around there (it helped that I was a stay-at-home mom at this stage!). My amazing mother-in-law and I actually spent one whole day in that area, hoping that if we called long enough, he’d eventually come out. We walked the area in the night, looking into drains, etc.
But we never found him. The trail grew cold with no more sightings on the cameras and no more phone calls with possible sightings. After so many days, so many nights and so, so many tears, I eventually had to concede that he was gone. I took down the posters and resigned myself to the fact that I may never see him again.
An unexpected phone call
Then, on Thursday the 8th of September 2022, I received a phone call which I never expected: someone had brought Cooper to a vet in Gardens. I was gobsmacked. For a few moments I didn’t even know what to say, I just couldn’t believe it.
As glad and amazed as I was to receive this call, the timing was slightly unfortunate. I was 39 weeks pregnant and waiting expectantly for my second child to arrive. I’d have to fetch Cooper with a stomach so big I couldn’t see my own feet, and a two-year-old in tow. Thank goodness for grandmothers! I phoned my mother and asked her to watch my son while I fetched Cooper. My amazing mother drove all the way from Ceres to come help me out.
So, after a year and three months, Cooper was back home! I wish I could say it was all a happy affair, but his homecoming was a bit rocky. His brother didn’t remember him and didn’t take kindly to this “new” cat on his turf. There was a lot of hissing and growling happening, but luckily no fighting. Cooper had to be kept in a separate room (the baby’s room!), which was horrible as he was meowing and really wanted to be let out. This was a tense time for me as my mind was everywhere, waiting for my son to be born, and having to deal with this situation stressed me out.
The very next day, I went into labour and our son was born early on Saturday morning. This meant I was away for three days and my husband was only home for short periods (amazing grandmothers were looking after our older son). I lay in hospital wondering what was going on at home with the two long-lost brothers.
Fortunately, things were looking up. Murphy adjusted fairly quickly to Cooper being back and a peace settled between them. I’m happy to report that they’re now back to their old selves, and I’m so happy that Murphy has his brother back.
It was amazing to see Cooper settle back into his old home. He was the same cat. He slept in the same places he used to, did the same things he always did, and was just the same cat that left us more than a year ago. It’s almost still a bit surreal that he’s back. The other day my husband stared at him and eventually said, “I never thought I’d see you again.”
Thank you so much to his rescuers for finding him and making sure we were reunited.
