A Penticton cat with a tale to tell

PENTICTON – This is the story of the Penticton cat that came back, but not the next day. Or the next day, or the next.

This summer, the Penticton feline travelled with its owner on a camping trip through Canada's north but wandered away.

For two weeks, Bille Burles searched for the orange tabby cat he adopted from Penticton’s AlleyCATS Alliance in 2012, but had no sign of her. Until five months later.

Suffering from hypothermia, dehydration and near starvation, the former Penticton street cat fought off foxes and other predators to survive in the Yukon, according to December van den Berg, president of the alliance.

“Clancy had been seen scavenging for food at a motel and there are reports from other people who say he had been seen defending himself from the neighbourhood foxes on several occasions,” van den Berg says.

She was found by the Dawson Creek Humane Society, where Burles left his name, hoping against hope his buddy would be found. He was, on Nov. 17, and was nursed back to health by a veterinarian in that city.

Air North is flying the cat from Dawson City to Penticton for free. Clancy first flies to Whitehorse on Wednesday where an employee with Penticton’s Wildstone Engineering has volunteered to pick him up, spend the night with him at a hotel room, before putting him back on a plane the next morning for the trip to Kelowna and the drive to Penticton. Unfortunately, Burles can’t take him back; he had since given up hope and adopted another. So Clancy will go back where he began—the AlleyCATS Alliance—and will be looking for a new home.

“I think Clancy has probably had enough of the vagabond lifestyle and he’s ready to retire in a big chair in front of a big picture window of the rest of his life,” van den Berg says.

If you’d like to adopt Clancy or help pay for his vet bills go to the AlleyCATS Alliance website for more details.

To contact the reporter for this story, email Howard Alexander at halexander@infonews.ca or call 250-491-0331. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.