Fluffy outwits predators, returns to Texas

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer

Fluffy the cat should change her name to Lucky.

Photo courtesy of Norval Armstrong Fluffy the cat survived three months in the wild before being rescued and returned to her family in Texas. The long-haired tabby from Texas was lost by her owners, the Philip Wattenbarger family of Houston, on Aug. 1, while the family was camping in a trailer at West Yellowstone’s Rainbow Point.

When Fluffy didn’t return, the family figured she’d been caught by a coyote, mom Elizabeth Ayers said Monday. Her three little girls, 6-year-old twins Tamara and Evelyn and 8-year-old Marisa, were sad about losing their affectionate cat.

“Tamara in particular had been very upset,” Ayers said. “Every day she’d say, ‘Mom, is Fluffy coming back?’”

But Fluffy was alive, and somehow stayed alive for three months on her own, despite the coyotes, foxes, owls, hawks, eagles and grizzly bears that frequent the area.

“It's pretty amazing,” said Rick Armstrong, a West Yellowstone School guidance counselor, whose family lives at Horse Butte. “There’s plenty of predators that would want to eat a little cat.”

Neighbors at Horse Butte, north of town and about a mile from the campground, noticed the stray cat and started leaving out food for her. She had a harness and tag, but was so skittish no one could get close enough to catch her or read the tag, Armstrong said.

Fluffy was apparently surviving by catching birds and chipmunks and finding shelter in a neighbor’s garage, where bears had once broken in and left a small hole in the door.

Finally, with cold weather approaching, Armstrong’s partents, Norval and Shirley Armstrong, borrowed a live trap. They baited it with cat food on Nov. 15 and caught Fluffy. Armstrong picked up the trap, brought it in the house, and read the cat’s tag with the owners’ phone number.

“Five minutes later, my mother called the people in Houston,” Armstrong said. “They couldn’t believe it.”

“Alive? In one piece?” Ayers asked. “We were sure she was coyote bait.

“She wasn’t the smarter of our two cats, so we were quite surprised. She has more skills than we expected.”

Soon Fluffy took over the Armstrong’s home, climbing on the table, rubbing up against her rescuers and purring up a storm. She was “very, very hungry,” Armstrong said.

Neighbor Anne Kinney, a retired Delta Airlines flight attendant, volunteered to fly Fluffy home.

On Nov. 18, Kinney flew with Fluffy to Houston and at the airport met Ayers, who paid the cat’s vet bill and $150 cabin fee.

“We were all thrilled when she got home,” Ayers said. The girls mobbed Fluffy.

Tiger, a cat the Ayers adopted from the pound at the same time as Fluffy, was initially less thrilled. But lately, Ayers said, the cats have started playing together.

Fluffy is once again joining the family’s camping trips around Texas. She doesn’t stray far from the trailer.

“She’s my snuggle-bud,” Ayers said. “She loves to be held like a baby. She snuggles down and purrs.”

“I told Elizabeth if you didn’t want her, I’d keep her in a heartbeat,” Kinney recalled. “I love animals. She’s a very affectionate kitty.

“It was a very happy ending, for a very lucky kitty cat.”

Gail Schontzler is at gails@dailychronicle.com or 582-2633.

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