Homeless cat reunited with family
Published: October 24, 2007
Tiger ran away from home three years ago.
Kittens of a stray cat, Tiger and his brother, Bruno, were adopted as newborns by Marie Watkins and her family. Bruno belonged to Watkins’ son, Tiger to her daughter.
As the kittens — Tiger, white and gold, and Bruno, a black-and-white tuxedo — grew up, their human family kept them in collars and name tags with three different phone numbers. Still, the cats kept losing their break-away collars and the vital information they contained. Then, Bruno disappeared. Upset by the loss of Bruno, the Watkins made Tiger an indoor cat. But an open window and a loose screen was all he needed to get out of the family’s home near Westgate Park.
“We searched high and low for that cat for about six months and didn’t find him,” Marie Watkins said. “We even searched in the woods around Westgate.”
The family moved from the west side of Dothan to the city’s south side about four months ago.
Jean Dykes has been feeding and caring for stray and feral cats in the woods surrounding Westgate Park since 1997. Three years ago, a white and gold male joined the colony under Dykes’ care. A tag on a collar told Dykes the cat’s name was Tiger. But the new cat lost the collar before Dykes, a volunteer with Felines Under Rescue, could get close enough to get any additional information.
As fate would have it, circumstances came together recently to reunite the cat with his long-lost family. A Sunday Dothan Eagle story about Felines Under Rescue’s effort to control the stray and feral cat population in Dothan included a photograph of Tiger.
“We thought he was gone for good,” Watkins said. “We looked everywhere; we really did.”
The Watkins contacted Felines Under Rescue, met Dykes at Westgate Park and took their cat home. Watkins’ daughter, now 15, is already planning to take Tiger with her when she goes to college.
“I put him right in my daughter’s room,” Watkins said. “Within five minutes he jumped up on her chest and just started purring and drooling. He was always a drooler.”
For Dykes, seeing Tiger find his way home was bittersweet.
“I miss that boy,” Dykes said. “He was one of the first ones to meet me (at feeding times), and I’d scratch his head and he’d roll over on his tummy.”
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