COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS, Utah — Not even 2 years old, Warlock the cat has spent most of his life inside his Cottonwood Heights home.
"He doesn’t know how to survive outside," explained his owner, Jaime Killian-Wilson.
When Jaime and her husband, Jason, road-tripped to Arkansas to watch last month's solar eclipse, Warlock wriggled away and ran into a nearby national forest as soon as the moon started to cover the sun.
"We didn’t really realize that animals are so affected by things like that," said Jaime, "because he’d never tried to get out of his harness or do anything like that before."
When the couple had to return home to Utah, the search for Warlock was left in the hands of volunteers in Arkansas.
"It was more like, ‘Well, maybe he’ll show up at some point. I hope he’s okay out there,’" said Jason.
"It’s like a needle in a haystack, really. It’s absolutely huge," said Liz John, director and founder of Hanks Rescue.
Hanks Rescue created missing posters, put up cameras and cages, even using a rotisserie chicken to lure Warlock back to civilization, which actually captured other creatures along the way.
"Raccoons," said John, "and they had their babies, and there were a lot of raccoons out there."
Miraculously, Warlock was eventually found only a few hundred yards away from where he originally went missing, with the kitty and his family being reunited last week.
"It was unreal. The whole thing was unreal," exclaimed Jaime. "I was just like, 38 days!"
Warlock is now back in the comfort of his Utah home, now only visiting the Arkansas outdoors in his dreams beside a family thankful for people who worked so hard to bring him home.
"A million thank yous will never be enough to these people," Jaime said.
