In July of last year – our big move started. We sold our Kamloops house, invested in a place at Sun Peaks and packed our stuff to go Seattle. Our cats were booked to go into a boarding home in Seattle for the month of August while we did some vacation travelling.

And with a week to go before we move out, Raphael goes missing. They are mostly indoor cats, but Raphael does wander a field for a couple of hours occasionally. One night goes by, then another, we canvas the neighborhood, no sightings… 6 days go by and we move out of our Kamloops home because all our stuff gets shipped to Seattle. Still no cat 🙁 We all mourn him – assuming he met a coyote on the hillside. But our fabulous neighbours, who love animals, and have spent many a night looking for their own cat gone wandering – won’t give up that easily.

They ask us (!!) if they can go into our yard and keep looking for Raphael. Don swears up and down that he will find him. I am so grateful for their kindness, but have very little hope that they will be successful. The fateful day comes, when the cat “courier” is coming to take the cat(s) to Seattle before we leave the province. At 8am we get a text from Lisa with a photo “Look who we found this morning!”. It is totally our cat – but Jade and I don’t really believe it until we see him with our own two eyes. Incredible – Raphael has been missing for almost two weeks, and 2 hours before the window closes Don finds him in our backyard!? Raphael reunites with brother and off they go to Seattle!

I am eternally grateful for Don and Lisa for selfless dedication to animals – theirs and ours. I have no words. So I drew them a picture 🙂 This is a drawing of their three pets – Maggie, Chance and Marlo. Here are the in progress pictures. And I forgot to take a final photo of the finished drawing – so the framed one at the top of story – is stolen from their Facebook post.

Here are the photos I used – drawn as one scene.