A cat-owner and her spirited companion have been reunited after a case of mistaken identity saw the feline accidentally travel from Atikokan to Fort Frances.
Heather Miller and her cat Grayson have been inseparable since she acquired him in Sioux Narrows at the age of four. Now a respectable 15 years old, when Grayson failed to return from his daily adventures one night roughly one month ago, Miller said she knew right away something was wrong.
“He was taken September 4, and I started to panic the night of September 4 because something didn’t feel right,” Miller explained.
“September 5, I posted on Facebook, and someone locally messaged me privately, saying, ‘Have you seen this post?’ and sent me the picture of him in a cat carrier. I was like, ‘Oh god, not again.’”
In what Miller says was a case of mistaken identity, a traveller to Atikokan from Fort Frances mistook Grayson for her own missing cat, and bundled him up to bring him back to town.
“She scooped him up, put him in a carrier, took him home and let him out of the car when she got there,” Miller said, reconstructing the events from what she’s learned over the course of tracking down any and all leads in her efforts to reunite with Grayson.
“He was pawing at her face, and she thought he was being affectionate, but that’s his way of saying, ‘Can you please let me out?’ That’s what he does to me at home, he’ll paw me in the face to say ‘Ok, let me outside.’”
Once Grayson made it outside, he was in Fort Frances, hours from home, and on his own. It isn’t the first time that Miller said Grayson has been the victim of mistaken identity, and he’s survived extended stints in the open before as well, including following a 2018 car crash Miller was involved in. However, with no one in town to fend for him, at least initially, Miller felt it was her duty to make the trip to Fort Frances and do whatever it took to find him.
“This past Sunday [October 5] was the fifth trip that I made to Fort Frances,” she said.
“My mom and I went there four other times, walking the streets handing out flyers. We walked the streets and alleys, i put up posters wherever anyone would let me put them up. And Donna [Lowey], she was kind and put in ads in two different papers. I posted online on different sites.”
After multiple trips from Atikokan to Fort Frances, and almost a month missing, Miller said she was constantly approaching people in town to ask after Grayson, and learned that he, or a cat that looked very similar to him, had been spotted in various areas. The Facebook posts and posters also earned Grayson some fame, and dozens of people commented on Millers various posts, saying they may have seen him in their area. Towards the end of her search, Miller said two locations had emerged as the most likely spots Grayson might have gone to ground.
“Friday night [October 3] I saw a post, someone had posted a picture of a dead grey cat, and I didn’t think it looked like [Grayson],” Miller said.
“I didn’t know the address but apparently it was in International Falls. I messaged Donna and asked if she knew the address, if she was able to swing by there to see if that was him… she said she was confident that it wasn’t him. That was when she told me they were working on two other possible sightings, one at JW Walker School, and the other at Green Manor.”
While there were plans to search around JW Walker School, Miller said someone had managed to take a photo of a grey cat in the vicinity of Green Manor, and as soon as the photo made its way to her, she dropped everything to head back to Fort Frances for another search.
“She sent me the picture and immediately I thought it was Grayson,” she said.
“I had a bunch of stuff in my car, but the second I got that picture, I unloaded the car and called my mom and said ‘we’re going.’”
Miller noted she had walked along Fifth Street East and the vicinity of Green Manor during previous trips to town and had always thought it looked like an area Grayson might hunker down to hide, with plenty of wilderness area located just north of the properties on Fifth Street East between Williams and Shevlin Avenues. Once back in town, and asking more area residents about Grayson, she was told that several people had seen a cat matching his description in the area over the previous few weeks. Once she and her mother made their way over to Green Manor, Miller said they connected with someone who had been putting food out for the wayward kitty on a nightly basis, and the stage was set for their reunion.
“He’s very particular, like he has set times when he does things, and the lady said he was normally there around 7 o’clock at night,” Miller said.
“We sat in my car waiting for him to make his appearance, and it was about quarter to, ten to 7 p.m., and I saw the lady outside. I saw her commotion, and I turned my head, and I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ I flew out of my car so fast. I hollered for him. He stopped and he turned and saw me, and it was literally like in the movies. He started to run towards me, but he did stop, so I knew two things went through his head; it was either ‘wait a minute, last time I went to my name someone kidnapped and relocated me,’ or it was ‘uh-oh, it’s mom, she’s going to be mad that I got lost.’ So he stopped about two feet away from me, and then was just kind of being strange. So I was like, ‘I have treats’ and went into my car and grabbed the treats and a plate and put it on the ground. Then he came right over, and I scooped him up before he got any ideas.”
Before Grayson, Miller said she was never much of an animal person. However, her bond with him has changed her outlook, and calls her adventurous cat her soulmate.
“He is literally my soulmate,” she said.
“I have never said that about an animal in my life, because before him I wasn’t a big, huge fan of animal fur. I didn’t understand the whole your animal, your pet is like your family. And I didnt’ really feel that with any other animal in my life, until him. I get it now.”
For his part, Miller said Grayson has been sticking very close to home since he got back.
“He’s staying inside for the most part,” she said.
“He’s lost a lot of weight. He’s sleeping a lot, so I know he was outside for that whole time. He was getting a little bit of something from somewhere at some point, but he’s a survivor. Before Christmas in 2018 we were in a car crash and he was lost in the dead of winter for 10 days, and I got him back that time too.”
