His name is Bond - Cat Bond - and after mysteriously disappearing from their Burnaby highrise, Stephen and Sara Stewart thought he was a goner.
Back in May, the Stewarts went out for dinner one evening, only to return and find their one-year-old cat was missing from their apartment on the 30th floor of a Brentwood highrise.
Cat Bond has a bad habit of walking along the perilous outer ledges of the highrise balcony, so the Stewarts assumed the worst.
"My wife went down to check for him on ground floor," Stephen said. "She checked some of the bushes beneath our balcony expecting to see this splattered cat somewhere."
But there was no Bond, so she went back inside and checked again the following day.
Stephen said he watched his wife from the 30th floor, searching for the cat below.
"I could see her getting kind of teary eyed," he said. "She was rubbing her eyes a bit, I can tell by her body actions, she was getting emotional."
According to Stephen, that's when she spotted Cat Bond - alive and cowering under a bush. Sara took the cat in her arms and gave Stephen a thumbs-up sign.
And while no one saw a feline falling from the sky, the Stewarts are convinced the only plausible explanation is that Cat Bond fell 30 storeys and survived.
"There's just no other way, unless he climbed down. We live on the 30th floor, the door would be locked when we left," Stephen said.
l "When you look up 30 floors, I just picture this little cat falling, and it's unreal. . It's hard to believe, but there's no other way he could have gotten down without falling."
The Stewarts brought Cat Bond upstairs and did a physical inspection, checking his limbs and searching for sore spots or painful areas. While the cat seemed fine, the Stewarts were horrified by the ordeal.
"It was horrible. A few people in the neighbourhood think it's a miracle he survived, and so do we," Stephen said. "He's great little cat, and we were horrified to think we almost lost him."
According to Carolyn Buxton, a vet at the South Burnaby Veterinary Hospital, it's unusual to have a cat plummet from that height and live.
"Falling that far and surviving is a miracle, particularly if they don't sustain any injuries," Buxton said.
"I have no reason to disbelieve the owner, but it would be highly unusual for me to see that."
However, according to a veterinary information network Buxton uses, once cats are above seven floors, their odds of survival increase.
The theory is the cats have time to right themselves and slow their terminal velocity before landing.
In the meantime, the Stewarts are taking precautions to make sure Cat Bond does not climb on the balcony ledge anymore.
"We just hope that he's learned a lesson and he won't do it again," Stephen said. www.twitter.com/JenniferMoreau
