Published Sep 29, 2026
Image Credit: CBS NEWS
A Minnesota woman feels overjoyed and grateful after being reunited with her cat, who wandered away from camp during a road trip and spent 40 days by herself in the Colorado wilderness.
Na-Kee Bullen and her boyfriend, along with her two cats, were driving home to Minnesota from Los Angeles, and they wanted to visit as many national parks as possible on the way. They camped out at Great Sand Dunes National Park, and that’s where the cat mom’s nightmare began. She woke up around 5:30 in the morning and discovered that both of her cats—Lewis and Fridge—were missing! The couple quickly found Lewis, who was nearby. But despite searching every campground within a 7-mile radius, Fridge had disappeared and they could not find the brown tabby.
Heartbroken and devastated, Bullen had to face the painful reality that her beloved cat was probably gone forever and had fallen victim to wildlife predation. She made the excruciating decision to call off the search and head home without her 3-year-old fur baby.
“I felt like I left a little piece of me there,” Bullen, a tattoo artist, told CBS News with teary eyes. “Driving back … I was just crying because she wasn’t here with me, and all I wanted was my baby.”
Back at home, Bullen—who could not be reached for an interview with Cats.com – kept looking for Fridge on social media and the Humane Society website, hoping that somebody had found the cat and brought her to safety. A park ranger warned Bullen that the odds of Fridge being found were extremely low, but she wouldn’t give up looking online.
“Every time I did, it was the most heartbreaking thing,” Bullen told the news station. “You’d see cats that look a lot like her, but it wasn’t her.”
But then, after 40 days of anxiety and grief—and surely a terrible ordeal for the cat—somebody found Fridge and brought her to the local Humane Society, where staff presumably identified her family through her microchip. Overjoyed by the against-the-odds happy ending, Bullen drove 16 hours to fetch her baby.
“She’s a fighter. She’s a certified baddie now,” she said of Fridge. “It was the most amazing feeling. It was just absolute tears of joy.”
Fridge is one of many cats who have made headlines in recent years for their extraordinary survival stories and reunions with their families, who concluded that their cats were likely gone forever and grieved their losses. And then, miraculously, their cats were found and returned to them often thanks to microchips and GPS trackers on collars.
In October 2025, a brown female tabby cat named Pepper escaped from her family’s house in Boise, Idaho. About a month later, someone found the cat wandering around San Francisco’s Mission Bay—some 645 miles away! Workers at a San Francisco animal shelter scanned Pepper’s microchip and discovered that she belonged to a family in Idaho.
In Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2025, someone found an orange tabby that was presumed to be a stray. The Good Samaritan took the cat to an animal shelter, where staff scanned the feline and discovered the cat had both a family and a name: Marley. The cat’s mom had been missing Marley for two and a half years, and she was overjoyed to reunite with her beloved pet!
Then there’s the story of Francine, a beloved mascot at a Lowe’s home improvement store in Richmond, Virginia. In 2025, the curious Francine, who Lowe’s customers come to visit, accidentally slipped onto a Lowe’s truck, was transported to a distribution center in North Carolina, and vanished. A large group of Francine fans refused to give up and launched an exhaustive search for the missing cat. A few weeks later, a surveillance camera at the distribution center caught a glimpse of Francine. Volunteers put out traps and food, and sure enough, Francine made her homecoming. Sweet!
Back in 2013, a black and white tuxedo cat named Mr. Mojo wandered away from his South Carolina home one night. The distraught family tried to find him, but eventually lost hope about ever reuniting with Mr. Mojo. A full decade later, Mr. Mojo was found just 2 miles away! A microchip scan identified his owner, who cried tears of joy when she got her long-gone baby back.
We hope you never experience the emotional trauma of your cat going missing. If it does happen to you, our article on how to find a lost cat would be very helpful. The article also gives tips for how to prevent a cat from going missing, including microchipping.
We wish Fridge and her family a blessed life!
