Was it bad luck to name a black cat Shadow? For one family, it nearly felt that way, until strangers turned a worst-case scenario into a Christmas miracle.
Shadow, the beloved family cat of Jeremy Barton, his wife, and their two young sons, went missing during a trip through northern British Columbia. While stopped at Liard River Hot Springs Provincial Park, Shadow slipped out of the car and disappeared into the surrounding forest, vanishing into the wild just like his name suggested.
Despite a frantic search in the remote northern Rocky Mountains, Barton, an Oklahoma City native, was forced to head home and break the heartbreaking news to his sons. What followed were five agonizing months with no word and no answers.
“The not knowing is horrible,” said Christine Sutherland, a Fort St. John, BC resident who would eventually help reunite Shadow with his family.
Against all odds, Sutherland and local resident Bruce Kosugi discovered Shadow near Liard River Hot Springs after he had survived five months living off the land. Even though Kosugi is highly allergic to cats, the pair, self-described “Rotarists,” drove Shadow eight hours south to Fort St. John.
Sutherland later arranged for Shadow to be flown to Winnipeg, where Barton arrived after a 16-hour drive from Oklahoma to finally bring his cat home.
“That woman is the closest thing to a saint that I’ve ever witnessed,” Barton told CBC Radio. Sutherland said she was motivated by thoughts of Barton’s two sons, who had cried for days after losing their cat.
“This cat meant a lot to those two boys,” she said. “And it’s so neat that they’re going to see him before Christmas.”
After crossing an extreme stretch of the North American continent and surviving the wild, Shadow’s journey is a powerful reminder that kindness can travel just as far.
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