SARANAC LAKE — An area cat named Ichabod, or Icky, went lacking for 9 days, survived a snowstorm and a flood, and mysteriously appeared at a person’s doorstep in Onchiota, 16 miles from his home. And nobody however Icky is aware of what occurred.
When Jenn Ivimey’s cat Icky, 10, bolted out her again door on Dec. 10 and into the downpouring rain, she spent all evening outdoors in search of him. That rain was thick snow and when FEH-BOCES, the place she works, introduced a snow day the following day, she printed lacking fliers and gave them to her neighbors. By the time heavy rain began once more, bringing flooding final week, Ivimey had no leads and had given up all hope of seeing Icky once more.
On Dec. 19, she obtained a textual content from a person in Onchiota saying Icky had simply walked as much as his kitchen door and meowed to return in. She couldn’t imagine it.
Ivimey left meals, water, a litter field and a blanket on the porch to draw him home, however with a heavy layer of snow, it possible coated the scent. She posted on a Facebook group, Saranac Lake Neighbor Helping Neighbor, to let her neighbors know her cat was lacking. But by the second day, she was already satisfied Icky was by no means coming again.
The day that she obtained the textual content about her cat being discovered, Ivimey had simply gotten home after a bowling follow with the native Special Olympics squad. When she learn Joe Marocco’s textual content, she was shocked.
Ichabod
(Photo offered — Jenn Ivimey)
“I was like … omg,” Ivimey mentioned. This was not what she anticipated in any respect.
It was darkish in Onchiota when one thing jumped up on Marocco’s kitchen door and hung there.
“It wasn’t our cat or our dog,” he mentioned. “We thought, ‘That’s odd.’”
It was Icky.
Morocco went to the Tri-Lakes Humane Society web site to see who to contact when he noticed their “lost and found” part.
Ichabod
(Photo offered — Jenn Ivimey)
This introduced him to the shelter’s Facebook web page with pictures.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s the cat,’” Marocco mentioned. “It was unmistakable because of (Icky’s) ear.”
Ivimey adopted Icky over the summer time as a companion cat for her elder cat Max, who was in hospice, as a approach to perk Max up towards the tip of his life.
She used to work at Tri-Lakes Humane Society, so she is aware of the significance of giving particular wants cats houses. Icky has FIV, the feline equal of the HIV immunodeficiency virus, so for him to be lacking outdoors was that a lot scarier. He had trauma to 1 ear, inflicting it to crumple and seem just like the “cauliflower ear” damage that some boxers get. He’s lacking some entrance enamel. And his coat is just not nice.
“He looks rough on his best days,” Ivimey mentioned.
But it was love at first sight.
Icky’s nickname for him is “garbage cat” as a result of he’ll eat rubbish if she doesn’t cease him. He spent their first few weeks collectively sneezing snot on her.
Ivimey bumped right into a buddy at Stewart’s as she fueled up for her rescue journey final week. The buddy suggested her that she shouldn’t go to a stranger’s home within the woods whose handle didn’t present up on Google Maps, alone, based mostly on an outline of a cat. Marocco despatched a photograph and confirmed it was Icky.
“It didn’t take much to entice him to come in, let’s put it that way,” Marocco mentioned. “He was really friendly.”
Ivimey mentioned that tracks.
“He’s a very confident cat,” she mentioned. “He is a dog in cat form.”
Icky lounged round Marocco’s home like he owned the place, rubbing on everybody and consuming huge bowls of meals.
When Ivimey lastly picked him up and Icky felt OK — he hadn’t misplaced weight, he wasn’t bony — that’s when she began crying.
“He’s fine. It’s like it never happened,” Ivimey mentioned. “He has a little bit of a sniffle.”
She retains asking him, “How did you get out there?”
“I would love to know,” she mentioned. “I’m never going to know.”
There are a pair clues as to what Icky was doing for these 9 days, although they elevate extra questions than solutions.
Ivimey mentioned he was “pristine,” effectively, comparatively clear, for a cat with the nickname “garbage cat.” He was gone by two main climate occasions — snow so thick it closed colleges and flooding that broken roads and made rivers spill over their banks. His white ft weren’t even muddy, she mentioned.
He additionally hadn’t misplaced any weight.
“And he smells like fried food,” Ivimey mentioned. “Like a dirty deep fryer.”
“I have no idea how he got to Onchiota,” Ivimey mentioned. “My best guess is he got in a vehicle somehow. Maybe the bed of a truck.”
Marocco doesn’t understand how Icky obtained all the best way to their home, both, and remarked that he appeared tremendous and clear.
“It’s really a puzzle,” Marocco mentioned. “It really was bugging me for a couple days. I was really trying to figure it out and I just gave up.”
He noticed tracks the evening Icky got here in, however he didn’t comply with them. He thinks Icky was indoors for some time and he is aware of a cat couldn’t have probably walked all the best way to his door from city.
Marocco mentioned Icky ate a pair bowls of meals so he thought he was famished, however Ivimey mentioned that’s how he often is.
“No, he just eats everything in sight,” she mentioned. “Maybe he was hungry, but that’s just his normal state of being.”
“What an amazing adventurer he is!” Marocco texted Ivimey.
Ivimey mentioned Icky’s absence was additionally laborious on her canine Whim.
“I sleep with all my animals in my bed because, why not?” Ivimey mentioned. Icky by her head and Whim by her ft.
They have a routine. Icky will get in first and Whim will get in final. But on the nights Icky was gone, Whim was not settling down for mattress.
When Whim, who is just not a sniffy canine, was sniffing outdoors, she believes he could have been in search of his feline buddy.
Ivimey needed to take the chance whereas she shared her story with the neighborhood to vouch for folks to undertake particular wants animals. They actually need love, she mentioned. Specifically, she’s hoping somebody will undertake a sure senior cat named “Frisky Business” from the Tri-Lakes Humane Society. Frisky Business is estimated at being over 20 years old and Ivimey mentioned somebody has sponsored her adoption price, so there isn’t any price.
“She really should be in a home,” Ivimey mentioned. “No animal wants to be in the shelter, and nobody wants the old ones.”
She mentioned individuals who can’t undertake can help animals on the shelter by donating adoption charges to make it simpler for others to undertake.
Ivimey mentioned she was grateful for all the sort folks locally who helped search and supported her.
Some of her neighbors went out in search of Icky on daily basis after work. A coworker at BOCES went and checked his cabin property within the space.
“People are so kind,” she mentioned.
Ivimey clarified that this was not a Christmas miracle.
“Very many people have said that,” Ivimey mentioned. “It makes me want to gag.”
She’s not a “Christmas person.”
She’s extra of a person who needs folks to deal with animals in want all yr spherical.
“It’s so important to spay and neuter your animals,” Ivimey mentioned.
