The cat came back, 52 days after fire
Animals can be resourceful and resilient in times of crisis, SPCA animal protection officer says
The last time Ester Spye saw her cat Socks before being forced to evacuate, she was trying to coax him from his hiding place under her bed as an out-of-control wildfire approached her house.
“He wouldn’t come out,” she said. “Everyone was screaming at me to go.”
So, Spye hurried toward the pickup that would drive her to safety, taking her dog Sweets and leaving the door open to give Socks a chance to escape. She was convinced that Socks, her companion for 17 years, had died in the fire that consumed her house on the Ashcroft Band reserve on July 7.
“That’s what really hurt my heart, where I had to leave home without my cat,” she said Wednesday from a motel in Cache Creek.
But last week she got a call from her niece, Shirley Wilson, who was also her neighbour.
Wilson and her sister were sitting in her house, which had been spared by the fire, when they heard a noise outside. Wilson went to the front door, opened it, and there was Socks on her doorstep.
“He just sat there. It shocked the hell out of me,” she said.
By then, Socks had been missing for 52 days. Wilson called Spye to tell her the good news and Spye couldn’t believe it. She rushed over to see for herself.
“I was so excited to see him, my heart was just pounding 90 miles an hour. I grabbed him and rubbed him, he was licking my face,” she said, crying as she recalled the moment.
“I was so worried about him. All the time I cried, and cried, and cried. He was just living around somewhere. I don’t know what the devil he did for 52 days.”
Wilson said Socks looked well cared for and there was no evidence he was touched by the fire. It’s likely that another reserve resident fed him while he was away.
“This is a good, happy ending for my Auntie Ester,” she said.
Spye’s is one of many stories this wildfire season involving remarkable pets.
When Spye’s niece, Angie Thorne, returned home two days after the fire she found that her home on the reserve, where she had lived for 21 years, had been destroyed.
As she and her family surveyed the damage, her granddaughter’s cat, Mittens, showed up. The seven-month-old cat had survived the fire, her blackened and curled whiskers evidence of how close she got to the flames.
In July, RCMP officers found a friendly black-and-white dog near Mountain House Road and Highway 97, north of Williams Lake. It was in an area that had been evacuated and scorched by a wildfire. The dog was turned over to the SPCA.
B.C. SPCA senior animal protection officer Eileen Drever spent about two weeks in Williams Lake helping local SPCA staff care for animals that were left behind when people were forced to evacuate.
“It’s very, very traumatic for people having to go through that, never mind worrying about their home,” she said. “I can’t imagine what they went through.”
Drever said animals can be very resourceful and resilient in times of crisis.
According to the B.C. Wildfire Service, there are now 158 fires burning in B.C., three of which were sparked on Tuesday. Since April 1, 1,212 fires have burned an estimated 11,528 square kilometres of land. The cost to the B.C. Wildfire Service to date is $473.4 million.
Notable fires include Finley Creek (10 sq km), Linklater Creek (8.3 sq km), St. Mary’s River (3.9 sq km), Lamb Creek (16 sq km), Hanceville-Riske Creek (2,390 sq km) and Elephant Hill (1,920 sq km).
The Plateau fire remains the largest in B.C. history and is burning 5,200 sq km, which is almost the area of Prince Edward Island.
There are 21 evacuation orders affecting 4,868 people, and 44 evacuation alerts affecting 15,140 people. To date, 431 structures throughout B.C. have been destroyed by wildfires.