Cat returns after surviving Katrina

By JOHN HOWARD

Staff Reporter

RESERVE – With the large number of pets lost in Hurricane Katrina, it’s not very often that you hear a story like the one of Chad Ayme and his cat, Boskie.

In the days before the hurricane hit, Ayme and his family were in the process of building a house in Port Vincent. In the meantime, they were staying at his mother’s house in LaPlace and his dog and cats were temporarily being kept in a dog pen behind his aunt’s house in Reserve.

Just as the winds started picking up, the family was ready to bunker down in LaPlace. They loaded up on supplies and rounded up their pets. However, when Ayme went to get his pets from the pen behind his aunt’s house, Boskie was nowhere to be found. He assumed that Boskie got spooked by the strong winds and took off. With time playing a huge factor, Ayme had to make the tough decision to leave his cat of 12 years behind.

After the storm, the Ayme family returned to Reserve and looked for Boskie. They searched for three months before coming to the grim realization that their cat, like so many other pets after Katrina, was gone forever.

&#8220My wife and I, we walked the streets. We combed the streets for three months,” said Ayme. &#8220We finally wrote it off that he was gone.”

The Ayme family soon moved to their new house in Port Vincent where they’ve been living for the past two years. Now, Ayme is looking to move back to

the Reserve area to enroll his children in Riverside Academy.

Ayme was scouting the Reserve area for a house when he came across a residence on the market by Keller Williams Realty, so Ayme scheduled an appointment to see the house.

On the day of the showing of the house, Ayme had arrived a few minutes early and began to look around the property. As he was scouting about, he stumbled upon something that he never expected to see. It was Boskie.

&#8220I looked at the cat and it sure looked familiar,” said Ayme. &#8220ŠI couldn’t believe it. I felt like it was a small miracle.”

Ayme inspected the cat to see if it was really his long-lost companion. He said the cat had a distinctive scar on his nose from a surgery and the cat was also missing one of his front fangs.

Upon inspection, Ayme immediately noticed those two distinctive marks and brought the cat home. He said that Boskie was afraid on the car ride home and was a bit sketchy on the first day. However, on the second day Ayme reintroduced Boskie to the other family pets and according to Ayme, they seem to be getting along.

After two long years, the Ayme family has been reunited with their presumed lost family member and couldn’t be happier.