Lost Siamese cat walks 900 miles home from Yellowstone National Park to Roseville California

The domestic cat's astonishing navigation abilities combined with their natural homing instinct and enormous persistence have appeared to combined in compelling this Siamese cat to go home from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming to Roseville, California; a journey of about 900 miles and his owner believes that he did it all on his own. His owner believes that he he was not transported in a vehicle but simply made his way home after he got lost on a camping trip to that wonderful park.

It is believed that cats can detect the Earth's magnetic field and use it to navigate.

Note: you can see that Beau has a slight squint which is typical of Siamese cats. Reason? Click this to find out.

Image: MikeB made with images from Sky News.

His name is Rayne Beau which I think is a very clever name because it is a take on the word "rainbow". And interestingly, his owners, Benny and Suzanne Anguiano, saw a rainbow on their way home from Yellowstone National Park to their home in Salinas having searched high and low for their beloved cat. They took the rainbow as a sign that Beau would come home.

They Beau him and his twin sister to Yellowstone's Fishing Bridge RV Park on June 4. This was the cats' first trip to the forest.

The holiday ended badly because Rayne Beau ran off into the wilds of the park and couldn't be found. The couple searched for four days but with heavy hearts they returned home to Salinas, California.

They didn't give up hope and fortunately Beau was micro-chipped and in August the couple received a surprise phone call from the microchip company. They were told that Beau was safe and well at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Roseville, California.

That's about 200 miles from their home and they drove to the shelter to collect him. Apparently a woman saw Beau wandering the streets of Roseville. They fed him and gave him water until is they managed to catch him on the 3rd August and then took him to the shelter.

Beau had lost 6 pounds which apparently is about 40% of his body weight and his protein levels were low due to inadequate nutrition. His paws were very sore. These are the reasons why Ms Anguianos believes that Beau walked all the way back without help.

They've now fitted him with a GPS tracker and I have to say that this is not the first instance on a domestic cat making a remarkable return home using their natural navigation abilities.

Another example: Florida Cat Walked 197 Miles To Get Home.

And about the wild cats:

Bengal tiger travels 1300 km to find his home range and a mate.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. Also, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable.

Mysterious Reappearance Of Lost Cat After 13 Years

Shelby, disappeared from her home with the Jalong family in Australia 13 years ago.  Then she suddenly turned up covered in lice with heavily matter fur. Her owners, apparently, didn't recognise her at first until they checked against a photograph. I can understand the difficulty in identifying her after 13 years.



Shelby's return has been described as mysterious and very strange but something very similar happened to my mother's cat. I'm not sure that it is strange to be honest. My assessment is that some domestic cats don't like domestication too much so they leave the family home and live in the wild or semi-wild. Their natural wild traits, which are just below the surface, trump their domestication/socialisation.

Then when they get older, say at about 15 years of age, they are tired, perhaps arthritic and unable to chase prey, so they decide to come home. It is a bit like a person going into a residential care home for the last years of their lives. They come home because at that stage domestication becomes attractive.

In the case of my mother, she had cared for many cats in her life (she died 5 years ago) and one them was a ginger tabby male cat, who she called Tigger. My mother lived opposite a golf course. Tigger left one day, unannounced, when he was quite young to go to live on the golf course. He returned about 13 years later quite clearly arthritic because he walked almost sideways on. He looked old, tired and quite grumpy and was certainly ready for some warmth and care.

My mother tried to pick him up but he scratched and bit her. He had become wild again but he still appreciated the benefits of domestication in old age. My mother fed him but left him alone.

Cats do have wonderful memories, much better than people realise. Sometimes their memory relates to the scent of a person. Cats have very good memories of scent. They can remember a person by how they smell. And as we can see they can certainly remember where their domestic home is even after 13 years but it is quite likely that Shelby lived outside nearby. I suspect that she lived outside for most of those 13 years.

The cat that now lives with the Jalong family is upset at the new arrival.