Smaug was looking pretty well fed when a Longmont, Colorado couple brought him in to the Longmont Humane Society on Monday. The couple had been feeding the tuxedo stray and had become quite attached to him, but felt he should not remain outside in the coming cold of winter.
Mallory Hochwender from the humane society says staff think Smaug was probably fed by several animal lovers over the course of the past two years, which is how long he’d been living on his own.
The shelter does routine microchip scans on animals at intake and quickly identified Smaug and the guardians who adopted him in 2006 and gave him a home for the next four years. Although Melissa and Chuck Park were divorced, and had both moved away from Colorado, the contact info on Smaug’s chip was current, thanks to Chuck having kept it updated.
Melissa first found Smaug as a feral kitten when she was hiking in Washington State in 2006. The Parks divorced in 2009 and Chuck moved to Longmont for work, taking Smaug with him. When Smaug disappeared early in 2010, his guardians thought he’d been gotten by a predator. Chuck moved back to Seattle later that year.
Melissa, who lives in Bellingham, Washington, was hiking in Minnesota on Monday when she got the call saying Smaug had been found. She drove to Colorado and picked the cat up on Wednesday. Smaug had not seen Melissa in several years before the reunion on Wednesday, and was a bit aloof at first, though he allowed himself to be briefly held and snuggled.
Smaug will live with one or the other of the Parks, in Washington.
Melissa, who describes her lifestyle as transient, says she and Smaug share a love of adventure. Looking back over the past few years, she said “I have wanted a cat. I just didn’t want a cat. I wanted my cat.”
The Longmont Humane Society is using Smaug’s reunion story as an opportunity to stress the importance of microchipping and keeping contact information current to pet guardians.
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