A black cat spotted wandering along a forest road near Furry Creek is alive and now adopted, thanks to a coordinated community rescue.
For about a week, residents reported seeing the thin, elusive cat in the area. Cat Search & Rescue Squamish (CATSAR) set up traps and cameras while Sea to Sky NANA (Neighbourhood Animals Needing Assistance) shared posts online to help spread the word.
Then, last Thursday, some community members saw the cat walking along a forest road in Furry Creek and acted quickly. They threw a blanket over her, safely contained her and contacted CATSAR, who transported her to the Sea to Sky SPCA for care.
“She was really ill,” Krista Larson, the Sea to Sky SPCA manager said. “She was skin and bone when she came in. She was running a fever. There was unusual bleeding happening.”
The cat was rushed to Eagleview Veterinary Hospital that same afternoon and diagnosed with pyometra, a serious uterine infection that can be fatal without emergency surgery.
“If it was not removed, she was done,” Larson said.
The cat, initially dubbed ‘Furry Creek’, underwent emergency surgery and survived. Larson said without the quick action of the good Samaritans who caught her, she likely would not have made it.
“It was very community-oriented,” Larson said. “It was a bunch of people coming together, It basically saved her life.”
After the mandatory 72-hour stray hold period passed, without an owner coming forward, the cat was put up for adoption.
She quickly found a home with Lorissa Campbell, a staff member from Eagleview Veterinary Hospital who helped assess her condition.
“I fell in love pretty well within a minute,” Campbell said. “I’ve been waiting for the right one [cat], and she was the perfect combination of my two cats I lost.”
Now renamed Goose, after the character in the movie Top Gun, the black domestic shorthair is settling into her new home.
“She’s really sweet, really affectionate,” Campbell said. “I think she’s just happy to be warm and have food constantly.”
