Cat lost after Hurricane Irma evacuation reunited with North Naples woman months later

Janice Dimitriou remembers the exact day and time her short-haired tabby cat disappeared.

On Sept. 17 at 9 p.m., Turbo fell out a hotel room window and ran into the North Carolina woods, the night before his humans were supposed to return to Collier County after evacuating for Hurricane Irma.

“He’d been through a lot,” Dimitriou said. “He was out of his element. He didn’t fall far, but he was terrified and took off in the night in a strange place.”

Dimitriou and her husband spent an extra two days in the town of Highlands looking for their cat. They put up laminated signs with Turbo’s picture and called local veterinary offices, the ASPCA and a radio station to ask people to keep their eyes peeled for a gray-haired cat with light-colored eyes. They walked the neighborhood where they had been staying and talked to neighbors.

After two days and no luck, they returned to their home in Pelican Bay.

“I was despondent,” Dimitriou said. “He’s not an outdoor cat. He never liked to go outside. He must have been terrified.”

A little more than three months later, the Dimitrious got the call they had been hoping for but hadn’t entirely expected.

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Jim Grove, a Sarasota man who was spending Christmas and New Year's with his husband at their second home in Highlands, called the couple and said he thought he spotted Turbo.

"I started seeing this cat wandering our neighborhood," Grove said. "It was unusual to see a cat out there by itself in the dead of winter. I went out to the front step and called out to it, but it ran into the woods across the street."

He asked his neighbors about the cat, and they all said it appeared to be homeless. The neighbors said they had tried to feed him, but he always ran.

On Dec. 28, Grove and his husband went to downtown Highlands and saw a "lost cat" sign in a store window. Grove thought he recognized the cat in the photo as the one he saw wandering his neighborhood. 

According to the sign, the cat disappeared three months before from a bed and breakfast across the highway from the mountain on which their home was built.

"I thought the cat may have found a way to cross the highway and go up the mountain," Grove said. 

Grove's husband didn't want Grove to get the owners' hopes up, but he knew he had to call. He kept in touch with Dimitriou and set up a trap to try to capture the cat.

A few days later, Grove sent Dimitriou a text message with a photo of the cat when it turned up on the walkway of their front porch. She sent a message back saying, "OMG. That is Turbo."

The Dimitrious had returned from spending Christmas visiting family in Chicago and weren’t looking forward to returning to the cold, but they wanted their cat back.

The couple drove 11 hours back to North Carolina with their other cat, Pumpkin.

On Jan. 2, they trapped Turbo with the help of Grove and a professional trapper.

“He hissed, showed his teeth and lunged at me,” Dimitriou said. “He was in survival mode. We took him to a vet up there to have him treated for fleas.”

Dimitriou said that was the only treatment Turbo needed.

“It felt like a miracle that he survived that long,” Dimitriou said. “Almost three and a half months in that weather. He survived 15-inch snowfall.”

The vet gave Turbo some tranquilizers for the drive home, and about two weeks later, Dimitriou said he’s getting better.

“He’s very shy and not 100 percent trusting, but he’s getting back to being the way we remember him,” she said.

Dimitriou is grateful to the people in Highlands who kept an eye out for Turbo and left food and water out for him over the last several months. She’s especially grateful to Grove.

“Every day, I’d say an affirmation and visualize that he’d be back home,” Dimitriou said. “It’s such a wonderful thing that it came to fruition. There are good intentions and good people out there.”

Grove and Dimitriou said they both believe in the power of prayer and positive affirmation. She prayed every day for Turbo's return, and every time Grove saw the cat appear, he prayed they could catch him so Turbo could make his way back home.

"It's amazing how it all came about," Grove said. "It was an honor to be part of it and to be a small part of Janice's answered prayer."