Ray the cat is named for Ray Brown, the renowned jazz bassist. And like any jazz cat, this skittish Kenilworth feline has an independent spirit.
Perhaps it was that spirit that led him to wander away from his Cummings Avenue backyard in the wee hours of Feb. 10. But it left his human owners, Randy and Debbie Knowles, devastated, fearful for his life as February’s mid-month sub-freezing arctic blast threatened.
Even three weeks after Ray’s near-miraculous Feb. 23 midnight return, Randy Knowles’ eyes became suspiciously bright as he talked about his cat’s adventure.
Randy and Debbie, who teaches music and percussion at Lake Forest College, are both animal lovers; Debbie brought her cats with her when they married and moved to Kenilworth in 1998.
Since then their cozily cluttered home hasn’t been without a cat; Ray’s current roommate is Ella, named, not surprisingly, for jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald.
“People say that cats are aloof, but our cats have such personality,” Ray Knowles said March 16.
Ella is the pushy, friendly one who wants everyone to pay attention to her. Julian, named after jazz great “Cannonball” Adderley, was dog-like in his devotion to Randy. Both Randy and Debbie still mourn Julian’s death to illness.
“We don’t have children, and we know they’re not children,” Debbie said. “But we love them to death.”
“Ray is my boy, there is no question,” Randy said. The cat sleeps on his lap while Knowles, an attorney who moonlights occasionally as an acoustic jazz bassist, works at his desk. Randy is the one Ray pays attention to, the Knowleses said.
Which was why they were shocked – “heartbroken,” Debbie said – when Ray fled their yard. The cats normally go out only on leashes for walks or in the backyard with Randy or Debbie watching them and calling them back in. This time, Ray wasn’t under the bushes Randy thought he’d burrowed under.
He was gone, and the Knowleses were in despair.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Randy said, “wondering where he was, and how he was doing.”
“We’d look at a chair or a piece of furniture and say, ‘Oh, he used to sit there,’ and we’d start crying,” Debbie added.
That was when Randy and Debbie discovered both the kindness of strangers and the good will of friends and neighbors.
Debbie praised the staff at Noah’s Ark, a pet store in Winnetka, for displaying a flier prominently next to the cash register. Their regular postal carrier, whom they know as Rick the Kenilworth Postman, comforted them with stories of cats rescued weeks after their disappearance, something Randy said helped him keep his own faith in Ray’s eventual return.
Their neighbors were uniformly and unquestioningly helpful, Randy said.
“One neighbor used his bird-dog to help hunt for Ray,” he remembered. “Others would talk to us and say, ‘Oh, I saw a cat, maybe it’s Ray!’ Everybody talked to us. The Police Department was really great. They even included it in their emails to residents, and one officer came by to tell us he thought he’d seen Ray.”
Kenilworth Police Chief David Miller said March 20 that he is glad his department could help in any fashion.
“When Randy came in and told me the situation, he was distraught,” Miller said. “Being a pet owner myself, I felt for him. (Ray) had been gone for several days, which had not happened before, and we were about a day away from those arctic conditions. I’m glad we had the ability to do anything.”
Doing something – anything – was what helped Randy and Debbie get through the two interminable weeks without Ray, they said. They needed more than the anecdotal tales of happy cat returns that they admittedly treasured.
So they turned, as one does these days, to the Internet. There, Randy found resources that neither he nor Debbie would have dreamed of. First he discovered the Missing Pet Partnership, a volunteer network of people working to find lost pets. Through them, he found Texan Kim Freeman, a missing animal recovery technician and self-described cat detective.
The Knowleses unhesitatingly took Freeman’s advice and bought not only her book, but found and bought equipment she said could help them pinpoint where and when Ray would turn up. They set up motion detectors in their front yard and backyard, with night vision cameras, including one that would send snapped infrared pictures immediately to Randy’s cell phone.
The Knowleses estimate they spent “a few hundred dollars” setting up the recognizance system. It was worth it, Randy said.
“When you can talk to someone who gives you an explanation of what you can do, it helps so much,” he said. “You don’t feel so helpless; you feel like you’ve got a plan.”
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It was nearing midnight on Feb. 23, exactly two weeks after Ray disappeared, that Randy and Debbie heard their front yard motion detector go off.
“I knew it was Ray,” Randy said, his eyes alight and intense. Debbie agreed, saying, “We were jumping up and down; I was in my pajamas, trying to pull on my pants to go out and get him.”
The two of them took turns recalling their careful maneuvering from front to backyard, their coaxing of Ray – traumatized, frozen and starved – back into Randy’s arms. The one-time 9.5-pound feline weighed only 6.5 pounds on his return.
That night, Debbie said, Randy slept with Ray on the kitchen floor, to soothe Ray and assure him he was home.
Weeks later, Ray is on his way back to normal, although his frostbitten ears still show some damage. He’s still independent and still skittish. It only took one look at a visiting reporter for the prodigal to race for the safety of the furnace room.
But Debbie and Randy don’t mind his restive nature, because he’s displaying it while safe, warm and fed in his own home, they said. What does the future bode for Ray?
Debbie was implacable: “He’s never going out without his leash again.”
Randy said the experience, despite being horrible, has taught him “never give up – never!”
It also has convinced him that people are, at heart, good.
“That part of the experience was fabulous,” he said. “You wouldn’t get that in a big town, but a town like this, everyone wanted to help. And we want to thank them.”
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy