When a cat dashed into the woods of Yellowstone National Park during a camping trip in June, his California owners, Benny and Susanne Anguiano, thought they’d never see him again.

The couple searched for five days through the woods near their campground at Fishing Bridge RV Park but never found their 2-year-old male siamese cat, Rayne Beau, pronounced “rainbow.” Susanne Anguiano said that Rayne Beau’s sister, Starr, started to meow through the screen door of the trailer. Eventually, when the couple made the tough decision to drive home to Salinas, California, Starr, who had never been away from her brother, meowed all the way back.

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“Leaving him was unthinkable,” Susanne Anguiano said. “I felt like I was abandoning him.”

But almost two months later, Rayne Beau was found wandering the streets of Roseville, California, three hours north of where the Anguianos live and more than 800 miles away from Yellowstone National Park, as first reported by the news station KSBW.

When a worker from a local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals notified the couple that rescuers had identified Rayne Beau from his microchip, Benny Anguiano said they were shocked that the cat had made it back to California.

The couple met Rayne Beau and his sister when they were 11 weeks old and decided to foster and then adopt them.

During their search at Yellowstone, Benny Anguiano said a campsite worker told him that there had been grizzly bears and coyotes spotted around the area, and that their cat was likely to have been eaten by one of the forest’s predators. After hearing this, Benny Anguiano convinced his wife that it was time to leave.

When the couple reunited with him, they said Rayne Beau had lost 40% of his body weight. He was restless in his carrier, but once they released him in the car he calmed down.

“He just looked at me, and then he put his head down and just fell fast asleep,” Susanne Anguiano said. “He was so exhausted.”

The couple said Rayne Beau has been back home since early August and was doing well. Susanne Anguiano is hesitant to travel with her cats again, but if she does, they won’t be so far away from home.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Sara Ruberg/Susanne Anguiano
c. 2024 The New York Times Company