Nicole Swanson saw the cat in the spring when she went out to mow the lawn and start her garden.
Black, with matted fur on its back, it peered at her from some tall bushes.
“Who are you? I’ve never seen you before,” she thought.
But then it started showing up everywhere — on neighbours’ lawns, in gardens, hiding underneath cars.
“She was really scared and wouldn’t let me near her,” she said.
Swanson asked neighbours if the cat belonged to them. She posted about the animal on social media. Finally, she decided that it must be feral.
But that didn’t stop her from trying to tame the frightened black cat that stalked the streets outside her Grandin home.
“For months, like all summer, all spring she would come and sit on the deck and just look at me working, but wouldn’t let me come near her,” she said. “So then in late summer, I was determined that I was going to catch the damn cat and start feeding her.”
She named the cat “Bubba.”
As the leaves turned yellow and the nights turned cold, Swanson began to fear Bubba wouldn’t make it through the winter. So she got to building.
“[Bubba] had a mansion on my deck, with blankets, pillows, three dog beds, tarps when the wind would get on her.”
Eventually Swanson contacted Edmonton Cold Weather Animal Rescue who recommended she buy an outdoor animal shelter made from styrofoam, straw and a tote container.
Bubba started getting close to Swanson for pets, rubbing against her legs and even, occasionally, sitting in her lap. Swanson lured Bubba into the house with the aim of getting her into a kennel, but the cat quickly became frightened and escaped.
Then, one day, Swanson found Bubba curled up in a chair, with a layer of snow on her fur.
“I was really panicking about trying to find somewhere for her,” she said.
She started posting on social media again, and even met a few people who mistook Bubba for their lost cat.
Finally, a friend agreed to adopt Bubba. (Swanson said she would have taken the cat herself if not for her pet birds.)
She mustered the courage to corral Bubba into a kennel, and drove her to the vet to get checked over.
But to her surprise, Bubba had another home, and another identity.
A lost cat
Last November Sarah Jamison arrived to pick up her two cats and her dog from her sister’s house in Grandin. The animals had been staying there while Jamison was showing her own house to potential buyers.
She loaded the animals into her car and rolled down a window for the dog.
That’s when Jinx the cat jumped out of the car. Jamison managed to coax the cat back inside, but when she opened the car’s back hatch to load more belongings, Jinx escaped again and disappeared from Jamison’s life for more than a year.
Jamison searched Grandin’s streets for her lost pet. She asked neighbours to keep an eye out, and for weeks afterward she looked for paw prints in the snow.
“I'd kind of resigned myself that she had either frozen to death, because it was -30 C that week, or a coyote got her,” she said. “It was really sad at first. I felt like a horrible person for losing her.”
That’s until she got a call from the vet that Jinx had been found.
“I was shocked,” she said.
When Jinx, known in another life as “Bubba,” returned home, she had gained 1.5 pounds.
"She clearly remembered me,” Jamison said. “I picked her up and she snuggled her face right into mine.”
Jinx ran up to Jamison’s dog and they sniffed each other — and when she encountered Jamison’s other cat, they hissed at each other.
“It was like she left yesterday and we got her back and nothing had changed,” she said.
Jamison said Jinx has never been a friendly cat. (The only person she seems to really like is Jamison.)
But Swanson said that despite the cat’s icy demeanour, Swanson developed a relationship with Jinx — or Bubba — over the weeks and months they spent together.
“She became my little buddy,” she said.
She’s sad that she won’t see Jinx anymore, but she’s happy that the cat has been reunited with its owner.
Only one mystery remains: how Jinx survived last winter.
Jamison thinks that Jinx found a temporary home. Swanson thinks Jinx may have been surfing from house to house, taking food and shelter as needed.
Cats are mysterious. Researchers spend careers unravelling cat behaviours. The Egyptians believed cats were magical and brought good luck. Some Asian cultures view the image of the cat as a sign of good fortune, whereas some Western cultures view black cats as a bad omen.
In the case of Jinx — or Bubba — the cat, only two things are certain:
She’s had more than one life (although nine may be a stretch). And she’s definitely not Jinxed.
