Randall doesn’t get out much these days.
And that’s just fine with Lin Johnson.
Randall, a grayish, friendly feline who is Johnson’s only pet, is now known as the “miracle cat” of his Goss Lake neighborhood.
He went missing on New Year’s Eve, and was found 19 days later at the bottom of a chimney in a vacant home near the lake.
Just how and why Randall got on the roof of a neighbor’s home is a mystery. Was he getting a good perch to watch New Year’s fireworks? Was he doing a belated Santa Claus impression? So far, though, Randall’s trip onto the roof and then down the chimney is a secret he isn’t sharing.
“How he got down there we have no idea,” Johnson said.
Johnson was beside herself when Randall went missing. She got the cat when he was a kitten, and she nursed him for a few weeks after she brought him home because Randall lost his mother right after he was born.
Randall went missing about 3 p.m. on Dec. 31. Johnson was devastated.
“I couldn’t put his cat box away, and his food bowl, or his toys,” Johnson recalled.
“I had cried and cried every single day. He’s the sweetest cat in the world and I loved him so much,” she said.
Johnson said she thought she kept hearing Randall at night and would get up to see if he had come home. Still, for 19 days, there was no sign of the 1-year-old cat.
“I assumed he was dead, but something told me he wasn’t,” she said.
Johnson recalled how a neighbor started hearing funny noises coming from the vacant home across the street last Friday. Johnson’s roommate, Gordon Marley, went to investigate.
“My roommate went over there and got on the roof and sure enough, there he was,” she said.
Marley put a loop on the end of a rope, lowered it down the chimney and then spun it like a lasso around Randall’s head. Once the cat put a paw inside the loop, Marley pulled him up and out.
Johnson, however, missed the dramatic rescue. She didn’t know until later that the wayward Randall had been discovered.
“My roommate was going to the store and there was a big ruckus outside,” Johnson recalled. “And here he comes across the street with this cat in his arms and said, ‘Look what I found.’”
Randall seems to have survived the 18-foot drop down the chimney and his long imprisonment without harm.
“He seems fine. He lost a little weight; he didn’t break anything.” Johnson said. “I thought it was kind of amazing. I don’t know how he survived.”
Randall went straight for his food bowl when he got home. Now, Johnson is keeping him inside for a spell.
“He’s been living it pretty wild these days,” she said.