Area horsewoman remembers beloved cat

This past Thanksgiving, a Battle Ground resident lost a cherished member of her family, but the furry feline left behind many fond memories.

As Lisa McGee explains it, Sully came into the lives of her and her late husband, Francis, when they were living outside Houston, TX in 2001. Francis discovered a wild kitten at the truck washing facility he managed. Knowing they needed a barn kitty, he trapped him and brought him home, where he was named Sully.

Sully was a mischievous cat from the beginning. Lisa kept him out in their barn and, after two weeks of being crated, she left him free to wander his new domain. The first night the cat was loose, Francis informed her that she needed to go rescue Sully. He had climbed into a young oak tree and was being whipped around in the wind like a kite, letting out horrible cries to vocalize his dismay at his predicament. Lisa was able to pull the top limbs of the tree toward her and, as soon as she had him in reach, Sully latched onto her. It was the last time he ever pulled a tree stunt.

Except for the transition from Texas to Washington a couple years later, Sully’s life calmed down. He took up hunting and excelled at it. His attachment to the McGees grew with each passing day. Lucky for them because what happened next required a lot of loyalty to get through.

Over Mother’s Day weekend in 2008, Lisa decided to go riding around Rock Creek horse camp north of Lucia Falls. Sully liked to sleep in the back of Lisa’s truck and he’d typically jump out when she would hook up her horse trailer. This time she forgot to check for him. She came home from her outing and Sully was nowhere to be found. For days Lisa and her family looked for him along the country roads when they were driving. Her neighbors took up looking for him, as well. Days stretched into weeks and Lisa continued to search, buoyed by reoccurring dreams of his homecoming.

Five weeks after he went missing, Lisa was leaving for work and heard a meow. At first she said to herself, “You just want to hear that meow because that can’t possibly be.’’ But there he was, crouched underneath their 1957 Chevy looking at Lisa as if to say “Is that really you?’’ She dropped her lunch on the ground, pulled him out and he was skin and bones. His dark orange fur had been bleached blonde by the summer sun, he had a big scab on the top of his head and a six-inch round scab on his right hip. One of her sons ran to retrieve his food bowl and he began eating, while nervously surveying his surroundings.

“He worked for five weeks to come all the way home,’’ McGee said. “He was really weak for a long time after that. It was like it took everything for him to come home. For the next six weeks I don’t think he walked anywhere. I’d carry him to the barn with me and he’d just sit and watch me clean stalls. I’d carry him into the garden.”

After that incident, anytime Sully was on Lisa’s truck, he’d jump off it and run the moment she’d start it up. One would think he wouldn’t want anything more to do with vehicles but, three years later on a Thanksgiving weekend, he managed to get himself stuck inside McGee’s F350. Unfortunately for him, the family was gone for the weekend. Their neighbor, Laura Venneri, searched all over for him but when she found him inside her truck, she had no way to open it. Once Lisa’s son, Ian, let Sully out they figured he’d been in there from Thursday evening through Sunday morning. Good little kitty that he was, he left no evidence that he’d been there much to Lisa’s relief. Had it been summertime, Sully probably wouldn’t have lived through the ordeal but, then again, he seemed to be bent on proving the nine lives theory.

There was also the time coyotes had him pinned down in some blackberry bushes. In between howling for someone to rescue him, he ran up to the neighbor’s cows and stood between a mother cow and its calf as if he knew a coyote would have to get past a cow to get to him. The mother cow kept trying to run the coyote off and their neighbor, Brett Venneri, came to the rescue firing off warning shots that finally scared the coyote away.

“The last couple years we bought him, to keep him from lying on the cars, a heated pad to lay on so he slept in a heated basket all the time,’’ McGee said. “(He was an) excellent hunter and mouser. I miss him a lot.”