A cat that had been missing for more than a year in Saint John has been found safe and sound, and the efforts of the community to track down the five-year-old Maine Coon named Zig has been described as “heart-touching” by his owner.
John McIntyre tells us they left Saint John to move to Vancouver and when they did so, they left Zig with his son because they had to find a place that allowed pets. But in October of last year, he somehow escaped through the door — he says his son was terrified to tell him, so it was about three weeks when McIntyre found out the cat was missing.
“Being in Vancouver the only thing I could do was try and go on social media and try to reach out to people,” says McIntyre. “And I discovered a couple groups in Saint John that actually look for lost pets or help stray animals and reached out to them — and I couldn’t believe the response I got.”
Posters were plastered around Saint John, searches were organized, tips started to come in, and a $250 reward was offered, but no luck. No luck that is, until last weekend.
“He actually was scratching and screaming at somebody’s door uptown and they looked out and saw this cat and starting taking pictures of him and posting it to Facebook saying ‘hey does anybody know who owns this cat, he’s super friendly’” says McIntyre. “And everybody was looking at the picture saying that looks like Zig, that looks like Zig.”
And sure enough it was Zig, found in basically in the same area of the uptown he had gone missing. Zig is in foster care right now and he’s been microchipped. He has a clean bill of health though he’s a bit skinny and McIntyre is now trying to get him home for Christmas in B.C.
“When I received confirmation 100-percent that it was him and I saw the videos and stuff, literally there was tears in my eyes,” says McIntyre, who describes Zig as a member of the family.
We’re told that there was a sustained effort to find Zig for the approximately 13 months that he was missing and McIntyre calls the help he received from Saint John amazing.
“It kind of makes me proud to be a Saint Johner, when you look at the type of people that live in that city. When I tell people out here I’m from Saint John, New Brunswick usually their first reaction is ‘where’s that?’” says McIntyre.
“It is true what they say about East coast people, there’s a different type of people that live down there and it makes you proud to be a Maritimer because in cities like Toronto or Calgary or Edmonton or Vancouver you’d certainly never get that reaction.”
You can hear Zig’s story on our weekly half hour news show Pulse NB this Sunday, November 6 at 9:05am and 9pm. You can tune into 94.1FM or listen live online: player.listenlive.co/32121
