About two months ago, the Madsen family’s orange cat Ginger went missing, a sad time for Shawn and Kristie Madsen and their three children Chelsea, Reese and Sydney.
But in an unlikely twist, the Madsen family and Ginger have been reunited, and Ginger is back at the Madsen home.
Ginger, a three-year-old cat, went missing on Oct. 2.
“She always goes out at night to hunt, and then she would always come back in the morning,” said Kristie. “And then we let her out on Oct. 2 night, and in the morning, when we got up, she wasn’t waiting at the door to come in. We looked around for her and put it on Facebook and everything, but nobody had spotted her.”
They thought Ginger had been killed by a coyote or run over, or something else had happened.
The family and their beloved cat were reunited on Nov. 30. A friend of a friend who has a farm in the Macoun area found Ginger.
“She said ‘I had this orange cat show up at my farm, and she’s really friendly and she’s obviously someone’s cat,” said Kristie.
Ginger had been at that farm for a few days.
Madsen was informed of the discovery, and thought it might be their missing feline, but they couldn’t be 100 per cent certain.
It didn’t take long to get confirmation after they went out to the farm near Macoun Saturday afternoon.
“She was pretty skittish when we brought her in, but as soon as we brought her in the car, my daughter picked her up and held her, and Ginger got pretty comfortable,” said Kristie.
“When we got home, Ginger went straight to her food dish, and she remembered where the food was, and she was pretty hungry.”
During her few days at the farm near Macoun, Ginger had been living in a barn with some farm cats. She had been fed and nourished while at the farm.
She had a few scrapes, which indicated a fight or two somewhere along the way. And despite the nourishment received in Macoun, she’s always been hungry.
“Any time we walk by the dish, she’s meowing to get fed, but other than that, she’s very healthy, actually,” said Kristie.
The family doesn’t know what happened to Ginger from when she went missing that October night until when she was found. Nor do they know how she made the 32-kilometre journey to a farm near Macoun, or how she survived.
“We don’t know if she hitched a ride, or if somebody took her or dumped her off,” said Kristie.
Ginger has been a part of the Madsen family since she was a kitten, after she was adopted from the Estevan Humane Society. Whenever she used to go out for her night time hunts, she came home.
A lot of people helped out during the search for Ginger by sharing her photo on social media.
“We had tonnes of people phoning us and texting us any time anybody saw an orange cat, or there was a post about an orange cat, everybody was texting me.”
The reunion with the family was a time for a lot of happy tears to be shed.
The timing of Ginger’s reunion with the family was perfect as well. They had been discussing the possibility of getting another cat, so Kristie believes it’s a good thing they waited, and that Ginger showed up when she did.
