The cat came back: Pet found 2 months after escape at Sea-Tac

By Nguyen Huy Vu
Seattle Times staff reporter

	Adelaide O’Connor, 3, hugs Jefferson, reunited with the O’Connor family in Rhode Island last week after he escaped at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in October.
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When the O'Connors lost their cat Jefferson at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in October, Kelly O'Connor figured she would never see him again.

She was wrong.

Now living in Rhode Island, the family and their pet were reunited last week after the 5-year-old orange tabby managed to survive on his own for two months in and around the airport.

"It's a Christmas miracle," O'Connor said yesterday.

Jefferson's odyssey began Oct. 2 as the O'Connors, a Navy family, were preparing to move from Keyport in Kitsap County to the East Coast.

Kelly's husband, Will, had taken Jefferson and his litter-mate, McKinley, to Sea-Tac to ship the cats to Washington, D.C., where Will O'Connor's mother was to care for them while the family made its cross-country trek.

Soon after, the O'Connors received a rueful call from Delta Air Lines, saying that as Jefferson was being loaded onto the airplane, he had squeezed out of his carrier and disappeared.

Kelly O'Connor said Delta cargo crews and the family spent the next four nights — from midnight to 4 a.m. — scouring the airport for Jefferson. The family finally had to leave because Will, a lieutenant commander, had to be in Rhode Island for a military commitment.

For the next few weeks, Delta and other airport employees checked local animal hospitals and shelters for Jefferson, distributed fliers around Burien and Des Moines and even paid for newspaper ads.

Dozens of local families and airport employees joined in the search.

On about the 10th day, a Burien woman spotted Jefferson in a tree just outside the airport. But when she tried to grab him, the cat's breakaway collar came off and he got away.

The sighting gave the O'Connors hope. "We at least knew he was alive," Kelly O'Connor said.

What also helped the family, they said, was the diligence of Dave Sakuma, the Delta Air Cargo manager who had made it his mission to find Jefferson.

"It was comforting because he would call us three to four times a day to let us know how the search was going. He even drove around with his wife and kids looking for the cat," O'Connor said.

"It was amazing. We could not believe so many people would go out of their way to help us."

In a last-ditch effort to find Jefferson, Kelly O'Connor flew back to the Northwest on Nov. 22 to put up laminated fliers offering a $250 reward.

But it had been more than a month since anyone had seen Jefferson.

"I had given up. I basically thought, 'Burien and Des Moines are beautiful neighborhoods. I am sure he found a good home,' " she said.

On Dec. 15, Sakuma's daughter Tanya telephoned the O'Connors to report that Jefferson had been found in a Burien basement. The homeowner had seen one of the missing-cat fliers and called the number on it.

Delta employees took Jefferson to a veterinarian, who identified the tabby through a rice-grain-sized microchip implanted under his skin. Delta then flew the cat to Rhode Island.

Yesterday Sakuma modestly said he felt "great" that Jefferson was reunited with the O'Connors and added he helped with the effort because "I would do this for anybody."

"We're just so thankful," Kelly O'Connor said.

Jefferson, home for a week now, is "4 pounds lighter but very happy," Kelly O'Connor said. "He definitely has no desire to go outside again," she added with a laugh.

Kelly O'Connor said it was important to find Jefferson because a military family's sense of home isn't dictated by location. The cats are a part of the family for the O'Connors and their three young children.

"The kids are very attached to (Jefferson) and when the cats are here, they know we're home," she said.

Nguyen Huy Vu: 206-464-3292 or vnguyen2@seattletimes.com

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