Seul Lee and Matt Reimer were expecting to see wildlife when they went backpacking on a remote spot on Vancouver Island. Instead, they found a lost house cat named Pipsqueak, and embarked on an hours-long trek to reunite the frightened feline with its owners. Last week, the couple set out from Victoria to the north island, driving 90 minutes down a logging road and hiking 45 minutes to the beach at San Josef Bay. The pair – who are cat owners and cat lovers – were told by other campers there was a cat in the bushes and almost immediately started trying to lure the animal out of dense bushes with hot dogs. “Every time you called the cat, like it would kind of meow. And then it would be very shy and skittish and run away,” Reimer said. The next day Lee crawled into the bushes and managed to capture the cat, winding up with a number of scratches as souvenirs. “I was like, you know what? You’re coming with me. So, I just put him into our tent. And then that’s when we were like, now what?” Lee said. They decided to cut their trip short and packed up all their supplies – including a tent with a few holes in it courtesy of the cat. On the long hike out, with an “oddly calm” companion tucked away in a backpack, the pair saw a hand-drawn missing poster with a phone number on it for the cat’s owners. Worried that the cat seemed dehydrated, the couple’s first stop was at the North Island Veterinary Hospital. The duo figured the owners must be local, and planned to leave Pipsqueak at the vet’s office to be picked up. But when they called the number from the missing poster, they got a hold of a shocked owner who had last seen her cat two weeks ago when it got spooked by a dog. They also learned the cat’s home was hundreds of kilometres away in Nanaimo. “Already our trip had ended much sooner than we expected. So, we were like, ‘OK, well, we may as well just go,” Reimer said. And they did, reuniting Pipsqueak with his people after a six-hour drive. “We are glad that we did. Whether, you know, whether we had to cut our trip short – it was worth it,” Lee said.
