Summit Lost Pet Rescue/Photo courtesy
When Breckenridge resident Alyson Zinniker first noticed her cat Finley missing late last month, she thought the 4-year-old, long-haired black-and-white tomcat might be hiding in a closet or curled up in some strange corner of the house.
But after the pet, whom Zinniker described as “very shy” and “scary,” went missing for three days, she called Summit Lost Pet Rescue, a local volunteer group dedicated to finding lost pets.
Volunteers helped launch a search, posting neon flyers with Finley’s photo and fanning out across the neighborhood near Boreas Mountain to look for the cat. Because Finley is a “night cat,” Zinniker said she borrowed a headlamp to search for him when he tends to be most active.
A week passed. Then, two. There were reports of a black-and-white cat in the neighborhood, but it wasn’t Finley. Zinniker said she began to think Finley would never come home.
Little did he know that Finley had somehow made it more than seven miles from his home, through Summit County, to a popular tourist destination at Swan Mountain, where a group of visitors from Michigan would find him alive and well.
“I had really given up hope,” Zinniker said Wednesday, July 17, the morning after he reunited with Finley. “I even gave my neighbors the lights back yesterday at 5 p.m., like, ‘We don’t need these anymore.’”
Visitors Discover Missing Cat at Popular Tourist Destination
Michigan resident Shannan Thompson said she never expected to help save a cat when she stopped at Sapphire Point on Swan Mountain with two colleagues Tuesday evening, July 16. Halfway up a winding mountain pass at 9,500 feet, Sapphire Point overlooks Dillon Reservoir toward Breckenridge and the Tenmile Range.
After a long day of test driving high-altitude performance vehicles in the Colorado Rockies, Thompson and her two friends had climbed down from the rocks near the overlook to watch the sunset. It was about 8:30 p.m. and no one else was around when they heard a “meow.”
“It looked like he just came out from behind some rocks,” Thompson said. “I have some experience with lost pets, feral cats, and stray cats. He immediately looked me in the eye and started meowing. I know that means he’s interested. He knows humans.”
From the way Finley came out from behind the rocks, apparently in response to the voices he was hearing, Thompson said he knew it was most likely a pet and “part of someone’s family.” This far from the nearest neighborhood, he said, “it just looked like a little guy who took a wrong turn.”
But he was also “shy,” Thompson said. And as she approached, he scurried away into the rocks. As Finley meowed from inside the rocks, Thompson meowed back.
“Being in the wild, he probably had some experiences that made him want to run into the little cave,” Thompson said. “I kept talking to him and he kept meowing. We had a good talk.”
For several minutes, Thompson continued this dialogue with Finley, until the cat moved toward her.
“His little head popped out and he slowly crawled out of the rocks,” Thompson said. “He was looking at me. He was meowing at me. He immediately headbutted me, started rubbing himself. I tried picking him up to see if he was familiar with that.”
Finley fell into Thompson’s arms without resistance.
“I said, ‘Okay, this is definitely someone’s family, we need to figure out what to do with it.'”
Summit Lost Pet Rescue Preaches Patience When Cats Go Missing
Hours after returning borrowed headlamps to neighbors on Tuesday, July 16, Zinniker was in bed missing Finley, who often snuggled into her chest at night, when she got a call from her boyfriend.
It was 10:30 p.m. She said she had just spoken to Summit Lost Pet Rescue, which had sent a photo of the cat that had been rescued from Sapphire Point just a few hours earlier. When Zinniker looked at the photo, her heart sank.
“I immediately thought, ‘Yes, that’s him,'” Zinniker said. “It’s still surreal to me that he’s home. He’s lost a little bit of weight. He’s just sleepy and cuddly. You can tell he’s seen a few things (out there), because he’s definitely more confident as a cat.”
Zinniker said her fiancé jokes that Finley is “the alpha of the house now,” because their 120-pound mastiff no longer teases him like he used to. At home, Finley has also reunited with his sister Penelope, who for a moment “looked like she’d seen a ghost” before sniffing him lovingly, she said.
Curtis Weller, a volunteer with Summit Lost Pet Rescue, recalled helping to search the Breckenridge neighborhood where Finley had disappeared, using a spotlight to look under bridges, sheds and vehicles.
“More than anything, we preach patience with cats because they like to hide,” Weller said. “Sometimes you never know where they’re hiding. They just reappear. Like this cat Finley, the biggest mystery is how he got from his home to Sapphire Point. We may never know the answer to that.”
An incredible journey for a shy cat
Summit Lost Pet Rescue speculates that Finley may have been hiding in a car that drove off and stopped somewhere near Sapphire Point. Zinniker said it’s possible, but added that her boyfriend jokes that Finley probably made the trip from their home in Breckenridge to Sapphire Point himself, in some sort of epic adventure.
“It’s like Homeward Bound,” Zinniker said. “He made it all the way. The girls who found him said he came out of a little cave. It looks like he was super resourceful. I just can’t believe he was at Sapphire Point. It’s crazy to me.”
Zinniker said she was grateful for all the “random people” who helped search for Finley, from pet rescue volunteers to those who called to report possible sightings to Thompson and his friends who found him. She said they should know that “what they did was really important.”
Thompson said he was happy to be able to contribute to the local sense of community in his short time in Summit County. He recalled seeing Zinniker shocked and “overwhelmed with joy” when she and Finley reunited in a parking lot late Tuesday night.
“One thing I remember her saying was, ‘I kept losing hope. I kept losing hope,'” Thompson said. “Life is a crazy thing and there are all these chances of losing hope and not a lot of good chances of getting it back. So to be there to see her reunite with her family was such a joyous moment.”
Weller, who said he has spent hundreds of hours volunteering with Summit Lost Pet Rescue, noted that while many missing pets are found close to home, other pet rescues take weeks and involve multiple compassionate parties coming together.
“Our message to others is to never give up hope,” Weller said. “We want them to be homed as quickly as possible. We want them to be in the immediate vicinity of the owner’s home. But we also like to let them know that there are success stories where it might take time. They might be found far away. At the end of the day, we are successful in finding pets in these unusual circumstances.”
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