Nicole Klopfenstein wonders what tales her family cat Felix would tell if he could speak.
She wagers the best would be about how the four-year-old black and white feline survived in the wilderness for more than 100 days after a ferocious wildfire forced the evacuation of the Rocky Mountain town of Jasper, Alta., this summer.
"What did he eat? He must've eaten mice," says Klopfenstein, a 41-year-old animal health technician born in Jasper.
"Maybe he went to a house and he got some food there. What did he do every day?"
Klopfenstein says Felix jumped out of a friend's arms and ran away in Valemount, B.C., as a wildfire scorched one-third of Jasper's homes and businesses about 100 kilometres east.
A few nights earlier, she says she was babysitting Felix, who belongs to her sister, when Jasper ordered some 5,000 residents to leave as a wall of flames approached.
Klopfenstein says she grabbed Felix, and her own dog and cat, and started driving toward her dad's cabin in Valemount. Her parents, who moved to Jasper from Switzerland in the 1970s, followed behind.
She says ash floated in the air and cars beelined to one exit in the town, moving slowly bumper to bumper.
"I just remember the sky was really red. I got the back seat full of all these animals, like the cat, the dog, the other cat meowing like, 'What's going on?'"
Klopfenstein says after Felix ran away from the cabin, she spent four weeks putting up posters around town for the missing feline, posting on social media, setting up cat traps full of sardines and tuna, and waiting for word that Jasper residents could return.
She says intense heartache kept her up at night at the cabin. She kept thinking about the wildfire ravaging her community and how scared and alone Felix must be feeling.
She returned to Jasper a month later with her sister, who had left her vacation and reunited with her family to help with the search.
Klopfenstein says she returned to Jasper with a feeling of guilt because her home was standing but several belonging to her loved ones were ash.
A week later, she says she got a call from a woman who thought she saw Felix. Klopfenstein drove to Valemount again with her sister and caught a cat in her trap that wasn't him.
She drove back to Jasper disappointed.
Then Klopfenstein's phone rang again.
A woman sighted Felix on her home's security camera.
"So we went out again, set the trap, called him, but nothing," she says.
She returned home devastated, with brutal thoughts swirling of Felix in a ditch, getting hit by a car or roaming around hungry.
On Nov. 7, the same woman who had seen Felix on her security camera texted a photo of Felix hiding in a marsh 15 kilometres away from the family cabin.
"I look (at the photo), and I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, looks like him.'"
Klopfenstein says Felix would have had to cross train tracks and a busy highway to reach the marsh.
She and her sister raced to the area from Jasper one last time and caught Felix in a trap.
On the drive back home, Felix was quiet.
"He was relaxed and sort of grooming himself. He was quite feral when eating, which was a little bit disturbing."
Klopfenstein says Felix has regained weight since his return from the wilderness. She's grateful he survived, as some other pets died in the flames because they couldn't evacuate with their owners.
Jasper residents she bumps into ask about Felix constantly and tell her he's a reminder there's hope despite the devastation.
"When you're having a bad day, it's like. 'Oh, he survived 100 days. I can do it too.'"
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 6, 2024.
Fakiha Baig, The Canadian Press
