$1,500 reward offered for return of missing cat
BILL BULEY | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 3 years, 10 months AGO
Wiley is missing from his Coeur d'Alene home and his owner is offering a $1,500 reward for his return.
Bill Buley covers the city of Coeur d'Alene for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He has worked here since January 2020, after spending seven years on Kauai as editor-in-chief of The Garden Island newspaper. He enjoys running. | March 9, 2021 1:06 AM
COEUR d’ALENE — Life isn’t the same without Wiley.
“There’s a huge void in our house,” Katy Sevy said Monday. “It’s so quiet. He’s not there to greet you when you come home. He’s not sleeping next to us. Even our other pets, they don’t seem the same.”
The estimated 7-year-old cat, which normally stayed indoors, was last seen Feb. 22. It ventured out of its Coeur d’Alene home off Elderberry Circle when a garage door was left open.
Despite searching for hours, putting up hundreds of fliers all over town, posting classified ads in The Press and contacting the Kootenai Humane Society, there has been no sign of Wiley, who is microchipped. Sevy even put up cameras around their home in case he returned but couldn’t get inside.
“We’ve done so much to try and find him,” Sevy said. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Sevy desperately wants Wiley home. She and her husband, Shea, are offering a $1,500 reward for information leading to the safe return of the gray-stripped tabby.
“Our cat got us through the hardest times in life,” she wrote.
When Sevy adopted Wiley from the Idaho Falls animal shelter about three years ago, he had been hit by a car and had his jaw wired together. They fed him with a syringe and nurtured him back to health with lots of love.
Wiley returned the favor.
“He’s just been the best cat ever,” she said. “Every day you come home from work, he was just there ready for you, he’d follow you around the house. When we brought him home, he just loved on our dogs, too.”
When another cat in the house got sick, Wiley looked after it.
When Sevy became ill, Wiley curled up close to comfort her.
“He took such good care of me,” she said. “When I was having those surgeries it was really rough.”
“He could sense when I was hurting,” she continued. “He would just lay across me and purr.”
But Wiley wandered away in late February when a garage door wasn’t shut all the way.
Sevy remains hopeful, noting that she read missing cats return home even a month later. With the cold winter nights, she believes Wiley might have gone up to a door seeking warmth inside. He’s such a personable cat she believes someone might have him in their home.
“He was so adaptable when we got him, he fit in immediately,” she said.
Because cats are considered free roaming in Idaho, Kootenai County animal control will not pick them up and the Kootenai Humane Society does not accept domestic cats unless they are owner surrendered.
Something that worries Sevy, she was told some people trap cats and take them to the mountains and release them.
She prays that is not the case.
Wiley’s disappearance has meant some lonely nights.
“It’s just so hard thinking where he could be and not knowing,” Sevy said.
Anyone with information about Wiley can call 208-220-9846
ARTICLES BY BILL BULEY
Kootenai's County only warming center could exceed capacity as cold snap approaches
Area's only warming shelter could exceed capacity as cold snap approaches
The executive director of the nonprofit St. Vincent de Paul North Idaho is worried that the shelter, with a capacity of 25 men and women and men and has been operating “dangerously close” to capacity, may have to turn people away as the coldest conditions of winter approach.
Coeur d'Alene Fire Department bond survey underway
Gauges support, provides look at possible cost to taxpayers
Grief they are hoping for at least 400 responses over the next three weeks. A presentation of the results is scheduled to be presented to the City Council on Feb. 18.
Here's hoping 'Old Notre Dame will win over all'
At the center of it all, the ringleader, the master of ceremonies, was my father. He wanted people there. The more, the merrier. He wasn’t passionate about Notre Dame.