In June, at the edge of their campsite in Yellowstone National Park, Susanne and her husband, Benjamin “Bennangy” Anguiano, looked out over the lodgepole pine forest. The ground was littered with piles of broken branches and old, dead trees that had fallen on top of each other.
The Anguianos were overwhelmed and distraught: somewhere in those woods was their little brown Siamese cat who had escaped from the Fishing Bridge RV Park.
For five days, the couple searched the area, calling out to their two-year-old cat named Rayne Beau (pronounced “rainbow”). They used cat food and toys to try to lure him out.
Benjamin and Susanne Anguiano in Yellowstone National Park.
(Benjamin and Susanne Anguiano)
But it would be weeks before they would be reunited with their beloved pet, a tearful reunion that by some miracle would also take place hundreds of miles to the west, in California.
There is no shortage of stories about pets traveling long distances to get home. In 2012, a black Labrador named Bucky He walked 500 miles from Virginia to South Carolina and was finally reunited with his owner.
Hollywood has even made movies about them, including 1993's “Homeward Bound,” in which an American bulldog, a golden retriever and a Himalayan cat make their way across the Sierra Nevada to San Francisco to reunite with their families.
And now, there's Rayne Beau.
Although it's been a month since the cat returned home, it wasn't until this weekend that the Anguianos felt comfortable enough to talk about the incident, in part because they want to know if anyone helped the cat travel more than 800 miles from Yellowstone to California.
In a telephone interview Friday, Susanne Anguiano said it all began June 4, when the couple arrived at the camp. She said she was trying to move Rayne Beau and her sister, Star, a flame-colored Siamese cat, from the truck to the trailer.
Anguiano said she was untangling the cats' leashes when Rayne Beau jumped out of the vehicle, took off her collar and ran into the woods.
“I screamed,” he said. “I swear, I think the whole camp heard me.”
She ran after Rayne Beau, leaving the van door open and the other cat behind. She said her husband closed the door to prevent the other cat from escaping.
She said Rayne Beau ran under a log, where she tried to pick him up, but that caused him to run off again, this time deeper into the woods. Eventually, she lost sight of him.
The next day they reported the cat missing to the ranger's office, providing a photograph.
“Every morning I would go outside for an hour and call him,” she said. “Even his sister, from the safety of the trailer’s screen door, would meow to call him.”
The couple spent days searching for him in the woods, calling out to him, trying to lure him with tuna and toys well into the night.
“But he never showed up,” she said. “Then the day came when we had to leave and that was horrible.”
“I felt like I was abandoning him,” she said.
As his truck pulled out of camp on June 8, Anguiano stared out the window, crying, calling out and scanning the road.
“I knew it was pointless to do it, but I did it anyway,” he said.
The journey home was grim. The pair didn't speak and Star clung to Susanne. She worried that Rayne Beau would get stuck in a tree or fall out of one. Would he starve? No, she told herself, there were plenty of mice she could live off of.
Susanne Anguiano took the sight of a double rainbow in the Nevada desert as a sign of hope.
(Benjamin and Susanne Anguiano)
As they drove into the Nevada desert, the couple saw a double rainbow. For Anguiano, it was a sign that her cat was safe.
“I’m a Christian and I was praying the whole time,” she said. “God told me, ‘I got him safe,’ and that’s what I held on to.”
It was July 31, and Alexandra Betts had arrived at work at Sutter Roseville Medical Center in Roseville, California. It was hot, with temperatures in the triple digits, she recalled. She was heading from the parking lot toward the hospital when she heard howling coming from some bushes.
Betts said it sounded like a cat in heat or giving birth, so he went over to take a look. There, he saw a small brown cat near a storm drain.
She stayed with him for a few minutes before going into work. Her coworkers told her the cat had been there for days and probably belonged to someone nearby. Betts didn't believe it. A cat meowing in the same spot for days didn't seem right to her.
Alexandra Betts found a panting cat amid triple-digit temperatures in Roseville, California. She took the cat home and posted photos in hopes of finding its owner.
(Alexandra Betts)
She contacted her sister, who previously worked at an animal shelter, and learned that the meowing cats were either in danger, in heat, or lost.
Betts ordered cat food from DoorDash. On his lunch break, he went out to feed the cat.
“I realized it was some kind of house cat because I could register the sound of a can being opened,” he said.
But the heat was starting to take its toll on the cat. Betts said he was panting and she felt she needed to take him home.
This wasn't Betts' first time helping animals. She had a cat herself and had taken care of many felines over the years. The next day, a Thursday, she brought the cat home in a carrier.
That night, he said, he took photos and uploaded them to the Facebook account to Lost and Found Pets in Roseville.
The cat stayed with the family until Saturday, cuddling and playing.
“He was a very sweet cat,” Betts said. “My son wanted to keep him, but I said, ‘If your cat Ninja ran away, how would you feel if you never saw him again? ’”
She told him that they should do everything possible to return the cat to its owner.
On August 3, she took the cat to the Placer Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Roseville. That same day, she updated her Facebook post to let people know where she had taken the cat.
Betts took more photos of the cat after bringing him home, where she said he loved to cuddle. Her son wanted to keep him, but she took him to a shelter so he would have a chance to be reunited with his owners.
(Alexandra Betts)
Leilani Fratis, executive director of Placer SPCA, said the cat was in fairly good condition when he arrived at the shelter. She said staff immediately scanned the pet for a microchip, and he had one.
“What is really incredible is that we receive more than 1,000 cats in our shelter,” she said. “Only 23 manage to be reunited with their owners, and of that number, one teenager has a microchip.”
“Microchipping is especially important for cats,” she added, “as it can be difficult to put a collar on them.”
She hoped the story would encourage more people to microchip their pets if they haven't already.
It was Saturday afternoon when Susanne Anguiano received the call, but she didn't answer. The number wasn't listed as the Placer SPCA's. In fact, the shelter had to call her daughter to tell them the news.
Still, Anguiano didn't believe it. She thought it was a scam. She Googled the number to make sure it matched the Placer SPCA in Roseville.
He called them and asked if they had Rayne Beau. They said yes. He asked them to describe the cat and they did.
While she was on the phone, her husband came in and told her he had received a text message saying that Rayne Beau had been found.
“Wait, is this really happening?” she recalled saying to herself.
She said her husband asked the shelter for photos. When they received them, the couple was stunned: It was Rayne Beau.
“Eight weeks of hope and prayer came full circle,” she said. “We were in shock, we hugged each other and cried, it was so surreal.”
The next morning, they headed to Roseville, about four hours from their home in Salinas. They entered the shelter and met up with Rayne Beau.
Shortly after, Anguiano said he took the cat to the vet.
“He was very thin,” she said. “He had lost 40% of his body weight.”
He said his blood tests showed low protein levels and his paw pads were dry, cracked and calloused, proof he had spent a lot of time alone.
Anguiano said they wanted to thank the person who found their cat, but for privacy reasons the shelter could not release that information.
However, a few days later, her husband came across Betts' Facebook post. They were able to thank her and provide some details of the story.
“She is the only one who did something,” he said. “She is our heroine, our angel.”
Betts was overjoyed to learn that the family had been reunited with their pet. She was also happy that she decided to help Rayne Beau after learning about her long journey.
“I think everything lined up perfectly for it to work out as planned.”
