By Jay Speiden
Kimberly LuDerus and her boyfriend were enjoying an April spring day after a long winter on the Illinois-Wisconsin border. In and out all day while working in the garden,

they had the main door open so that the warm spring air could flow into their house through the screen door. But these humans weren’t the only ones enticed by the intoxicating smells and sounds of that early spring day. Their two cats, Ziggy, a shy young female, and Skeeziks, a 12-pound “mama’s boy,” were both curious about the bursting calliope of life wafting through the house. And when Kimberly’s boyfriend propped the screen door open for a moment to carry some supplies out to the garden, it was more than Ziggy could stand. She poked her nose out and, enticed by the riot of spring, left the safety of the house and headed out into the wild.
THE GETAWAY
“I noticed that Ziggy was not in the house and I saw the door was propped open,” LuDerus said. “I immediately ran outside and there was Ziggy, in the yard, crouched in a stalking stance, like she was the king of the jungle stalking a wild deer.” But Ziggy had never been outside before and chances are she wasn’t stalking anything but a leaf or a shadow. While Ziggy was transfixed on whatever game was dancing in her head, LuDerus tried to sneak up and catch her. But just as she got close, Ziggy sprung into a run and rounded the corner of the house. LuDerus gave chase, but by the time she got around the corner Ziggy was gone. “It’s like she just vanished into thin air,” LuDerus explained. “I spent the next two hours scouring the neighborhood, knocking on doors, but Ziggy was gone.”
INTO THE WILD
“I got Ziggy from a farm,” LuDerus explains. “She was the runt of the litter, but I knew she was the one I wanted the second I saw her. She was just a shy, little, messy ball of fuzz, a ragamuffin.” LuDerus picked the right kitten because Ziggy grew into a loving, sweet young cat. She slept in the bed with LuDerus every night and in the morning, it was not uncommon to find her with her paws wrapped around LuDerus’ male cat Skeeziks, in a loving embrace.
“When she disappeared, I kind of lost it a little,” LuDerus recollects. “My neighbors thought I was crazy because I would go door to door asking if anyone had seen Ziggy and at night I’d wake up all the time hearing coyotes in the woods and thinking I heard Ziggy crying out for help.” When you work as a helicopter pilot for an NBC news station in Chicago and you fly every day over one of the nation’s busiest cities, sleepless nights filled with anxiety aren’t such a good thing.
After two months of fretting and worry, LuDerus started to give up hope, thinking that one of the many coyotes that roam the woods near her house had caught up with the little vagabond. She could only hope that Ziggy hadn’t suffered. As it turns out, she wasn’t the only one feeling the drag of Ziggy’s absence. Her mama’s boy Skeeziks was acting strangely. He was despondent, licking and chewing his way through cat toys at an alarming rate. The family vet advised LuDerus that it might be time to get another kitten to keep Skeeziks company. So, six months after Ziggy ran away, LuDerus adopted a shelter kitten, a little girl named Pixie.
Two weeks after she brought home Pixie from the shelter LuDerus got a call from Home Again Pet Recovery, telling her that they had found Ziggy. She had travelled 30 miles from home—across a busy highway, a busier interstate, a state line, and miles of bog land filled with coyotes and countless other animals that might have threatened a hapless, furry little house cat. But Ziggy proved to be more than the meek kitten she appears to be: during her journey, she managed to gain four pounds and, despite a case of ear mites and worms, she was still in good health when she holed up in the safe haven of a front porch. The woman who owned the house heard her and was able to coax Ziggy inside after two days of offering milk and food. Eventually she also fell for Ziggy and wanted to adopt her. But before assuming ownership of Ziggy, she first took the cat to the vet, where a scan revealed that Ziggy had a chip—a chip that revealed her true owner Kimberly LuDerus. The vet called LuDerus and told her that they had Ziggy. "I nearly dropped the phone," LuDerus said. "I just couldn't believe she was still alive."
Within a day the two were reunited, thanks to Home Again Pet Recovery and the conscientious actions of Ziggy’s rescuer. Their reunion came a full six months since that fateful spring day when Ziggy left the house and her adventure started. “When she saw me in the vet’s office, she flew into my lap. I knew I had my Ziggy back.”
HOME AGAIN
The two have been together ever since. Ziggy is more cautious today and a little more skittish. The true secrets of her ordeal will remain locked behind her sweet eyes for only her to know and remember, but she’s home again and back to her old self. She sleeps with LuDerus each night and when they wake, she often still has her paws wrapped around her old friend Skeeziks.
The best sign that Ziggy is happy to be home is that, these days, when the door opens, Ziggy heads the other way.
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