Bear, left, and Scout are now safe and home with their owners.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Okanagan Humane Society
March 25, 2022 - 6:00 AM
Two cats siblings that accidentally stowed away on a boat in Kelowna almost one year ago have been reunited with their owners.
After spending five years at their home in the Scotty Creek area of Kelowna, Bear and Scout disappeared the very day their owners moved their boat to Oyama.
"(They) made the assumption that the cats must have been sleeping in the boat," Okanagan Humane Society volunteer president Romany Runnalls told iNFOnews.ca.
A poster campaign was launched as the owners tried to spread the words about their missing cats, but for months there were no sightings.
Then, last October, someone in the Lake Country area reported a possible sighting and a cat was trapped by the Humane Society.
Identified by a tattoo, the cat turned out to be Scout, who was then reunited with his owners.
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But the whereabouts of Scout's brother, Bear, was still unknown.
Then a couple of weeks ago a cat matching Bear's description was spotted in the McCurdy Road area of Kelowna.
Again a trap was set, and the feral cat was caught.
The cat's tattoo identified it as Bear.
"We figured that Bear jumped ship along the route because he ended up south of the airport whereas the other one ended up in Lake Country," Runnalls said.
The Okanagan Humane Society president said the not-for-profit group receives about 400 calls a year about missing cats.
Runnalls said, while tattoos are good, it's often difficult to read them correctly and strongly advises cat owners to have their pets microchipped.
Scout and Bear were originally rescue cats which their owners got from the Humane Society in 2016.
Now, both siblings have been reunited at their Scotty Creek home.
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