“Pure astonishment.” Katie Robb of Fairbanks was overjoyed when she received word that her cat, Nigel, had been discovered safe and sound about a month after he had gone missing in central California.
During a cross-country road trip, Nigel vanished at a Sears Auto Center in Bakersfield, California, on Feb. 8. After days of looking for the 8-year-old orange, tabby yielded no results, Robb and her road-trip companion, Trista Crass, were obliged to continue on their trek.
Three weeks later, she received the wonderful news from a random call from a shop employee who “sounded just as astonished in the message as I felt listening to it,” according to Robb.
Nigel had gone missing just as Robb was preparing to return to Fairbanks following a three-year spell in Asheville, North Carolina — “this time for good!” she said in an email. She planned to drive back to Fairbanks for the relocation, and she would be accompanied by Nigel.
“He has traveled with me across the country several times, and has essentially been my constant companion for the last 7 years,” Robb wrote of Nigel, a rescue animal she adopted.
Robb and Crass journeyed all the way from North Carolina to the West Coast. They ran into car difficulty in California when two front axles on her car needed to be changed, so they had to halt in Bakersfield.
Robb stated on a GoFundMe website that is no longer up that Nigel had been sleeping in the car at night for much of this journey, and that’s where he was the most comfortable. She told the employees that there was a cat in the car and that they should keep the windows up, and that she would return early the next morning. After that, she and Crass checked into a motel for the night.
They returned the next morning, Feb. 8, just after the shop had opened and saw the windows had been rolled down.
Nigel was nowhere to be found.
For the following three days, Robb and Crass sought in every nook and cranny of the auto shop and the adjoining mall parking lot for Nigel, while the staff, who Robb claimed had never seen the cat and were doubtful, watched on. They postponed arrangements with relatives and friends, as well as day vacations planned ahead of time, to continue their search.
They once noticed his foot under the shop door after it had closed for the evening and heard a meow. However, his joy was short-lived, since he was nowhere to be seen the next morning. However, it offered Robb hope.
“We now knew we weren’t insane, even if the personnel at the auto store thought we were!” Two young women with blue and purple hair and elaborate kaftans are crawling on their hands and knees, making kitten noises. It was a sight to behold.”
The two had finally given up. They decided to move forward after posting notices on Craigslist and Facebook. However, after losing Nigel, the road trip lost all of its appeal, and the two drove back to Fairbanks as swiftly as possible, according to Robb.
Weeks went by. Then, surprisingly, on March 2, a manager received a phone call: Nigel had been meowing in a back office and had finally decided to come out of the shadows. Robb received images from the shop, and it was indeed Nigel, but a little thinner. Robb is still perplexed as to where he may have been all this time.
The final stage was to return Nigel to his home. In less than a day, friends and relatives responded to a GoFundMe campaign asking for the $700 required to transport him safely back to Fairbanks. Robb wrote, “I was blown away.”
“Nothing inspires you to get up every day and do good for the world like an outpouring of love,” Robb wrote.
Robb picked him up at the Fairbanks International Airport on March 5. Nigel is readjusting to life in Fairbanks now that he’s safely returned home. Robb ended in her email that he’ll need to adjust even more in September since he’ll have to share her attention with her first kid, who is due then.
