BOWDOINHAM

There were times she thought she’d never see his little whiskered face again.

But even on those days it was bitter cold with blizzard conditions, 17-year-old Denise Tisdale had faith that her cat Cheddar could survive, wherever he was.

She had adopted the orange tabby cat in May 2012 after initially fostering him, and had him declawed so he wouldn’t destroy her family’s house. She’d had a cat she was devastated to lose earlier in 2012 that had been with her since age 4. When she got Cheddar, she would have friends come to her house to hang out so she didn’t have to leave the cat home alone.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, a friend invited Tisdale to her house and told her to bring the cat. However, she made a mistake she never will again, and though she had a cat carrier, she let the friend carry Cheddar inside. The 4-year-old cat escaped from the friend’s arms before making it inside and scared, darted away. It was only a moment before midnight, so Tisdale started 2015 fearing it was a terrible omen marking the year to come.

He wasn’t to be found that night, or the next morning when she called for him and tried to lure him by shaking a bag of food. There was no snow on the ground at the time and no signs of the feline. She went door to door, that day and for days afterward near her friend’s home on White Road in Bowdoinham. She made fliers and posted her story on Facebook, including through Maine Lost Cat Recovery. She set up game cameras but was never able to capture the elusive cat on camera.

While many were amazing, some of the property owners in the neighborhood didn’t want her on their property and discouraged her from her efforts to find her cat, noting that coyotes and fishers were present nearby. One woman told her a week ago, point blank, to stop looking. But cats are smart and need very little to stay alive, the animal lover and aspiring veterinarian said. Her cat had been a stray once with the battle scars to prove it, and she had faith he could find food and survive.

Then one day she talked with her mom about how, if they have dogs that can track missing humans, there must be dogs that can track lost pets. A Google search brought up a local business right in Bowdoin, Lost Pet Tracking Dogs.

“I’d never heard anything about this before, until I lost my cat and was looking for anything that would help me,” Tisdale said.

To find Lisa Nazarenko and her tracking dogs so close, she said, “I felt like the luckiest person alive.”

It was three weeks after losing Cheddar, but starting from where she’d last seen the orange cat, it was only 10 or 15 minutes before Nazarenko’s bloodhound found the cat under an outbuilding a couple of houses down, and a black lab indicated the cat was alive. While she wasn’t able to coax the cat out after that, “it gave me hope because I knew my cat was still alive.”

She knew people were seeing her posters and Facebook posts about Cheddar, as many residents she stopped to see during her search had already seen pictures of him. She had sightings stretch as far as Harpswell, so it was tough knowing the small animal could be anywhere and “the world is too big.”

The senior at Mt. Ararat High School didn’t give up and continually returned to Bowdoinham, even canvassing as far as Carding Machine Road asking for permission to check outbuildings and barns. Finally, on Tuesday while she was at school, she got a call from a White Street resident who said his wife and daughter had seen a cat that looked exactly like Cheddar, a couple of homes south of the friend’s house the cat ran away from. It was surreal as she called for him inside one of the barns on the property and heard a familiar but scared, raspy cry.

As she moved closer to the sound, panicked the cat may be trapped, “it happened so quick and all of a sudden he starts running toward me.”

She picked him up and, crying, took him to her car and checked markings on the skinny cat to confirm it was Cheddar. But now with this starving cat, “I was freaking out. What do I do?”

She called and told her mother she’d found her cat, half in tears “and just so overwhelmed because it had been so long since I had hope. I really started to lose hope of me finding him anytime soon.”

But she wouldn’t stop looking and if she’s listened to those who advised her to give up, “I wouldn’t have found him and he would have starved to death.”

Cheddar, who dropped from 15.6 pounds down to 7, is at the Woodbrook Animal Clinic in Woolwich recovering. He has a bit of frostbite on his ear tips, but should be fine and is expected to return home today. He will need to be reintroduced to food with small, frequent portions.

“He is a survivor,” Tisdale said, and despite the odds, “he survived in negative 20- degree weather without claws,” in an unfamiliar area after having been an inside cat the last two years.

“He survived because I looked for him,” she said, “so I think hopefully people who hear that, who have lost their cat, will be encouraged by that.”