It was an emotional moment on May 19 when Raymond McNamara reunited with his 20-year-old blind cat, Lily, after she was lost for two months in Florida.
“Hey Lily, you happy to be home? Happy your daddy’s got you?” Kathy Bieniek, the vice president of Saving Sage Animal Rescue in Miami, can be heard saying to McNamara in a video posted on YouTube. “Daddy’s happy too, I can tell.”
“She’s never going to get away from me again,” McNamara replied on camera, fighting back tears.
McNamara had been traveling cross-country from California with his beloved cat when the long-haired Himalayan wandered off and got lost in South Florida. Devastated, McNamara alerted the authorities for help.
“Animal control and the police department were looking for her when she was first lost. He stirred up a lot of attention because he was frantic,” Bieniek told ABC News. “We organized the search party trying to find her but unfortunately she was not found. He left thinking his cat was gone. Two months later I got a message on Facebook that a lady found a cat at the construction site where she was lost. We pieced it together ... that was definitely was his cat. Lily did not have a microchip, but I had his mom’s phone number from when I was dealing with him earlier.”
Lily, who is blind and deaf, had survived two months on her own “in the heat and in the bad weather with torrential rain,” said Bieniek. “She was terribly matted and sick.”
The staff at Saving Sage teamed up with Pet Express Animal Hospital to nurse her back to health until McNamara was able to make the trip back cross-country to pick her up.
“She was very dehydrated and very sick,” said Daniel Rayment, the hospital’s veterinary practice manager. “She had some liver issues. We hospitalized her, put her on IV fluids.”
Once McNamara arrived, he was overcome with emotion to see his best friend again.
“He broke down in tears and is never going to let her out of his sight again. She is his world,” said Bieniek. “He’s got her. He’s excited.”