$2.5K for a missing cat? Columbia man says this cat means much more than the huge reward
Cries for help searching for missing pets are no rare thing in local social media groups.
But this cry is not like most others. Then again, Cleo is not like most cats.
Columbia resident Jim Bowie has offered an eye-popping $2,500 reward for the return of his family’s black-haired, yellow-eyed, “always present” cat, Cleo.
The money, he said, is not important to him. He set such a high reward with the hope that it would catch wide attention and raise the chances of Cleo’s return.
“That’s nothing but a number on a piece of paper that’s going to go to my grave with me,” Bowie said. “I just want my cat back.”
But the reward, he said, is not the real story.
Cleo joined the Bowie family in August of 2019 thanks to Bowie’s close friend and coworker, Bradley Davis, who had found a pair of scraggly kittens and brought them to the office.
Cleo became best buddies with the family’s black lab, Lucy, and they both followed Bowie everywhere he went around the house, he said. Cleo slept between his wife’s knees at night and would beg for “a princess escort” to her food bowl when she wanted to eat.
“She blossomed into just a beautiful cat. She’s got the coolest little personality,” Bowie said.
On June 3, 2022, Bowie’s friend Davis, a 38-year-old staff sergeant in the Army National Guard, died unexpectedly after going for a physical training run. In the devastation that followed, Bowie at some point found himself sorting through various papers and came upon Cleo’s veterinary paperwork from when the family first adopted her. As a stray, her birth date had been a guess for the vet, and it caught Bowie’s eye: June 3.
“I felt like that was a God wink,” Bowie said.
Now, Cleo’s not just a pet but a reminder of Bowie’s lost friend.
Based on video from his home security system, Bowie believes Cleo might have crawled into the engine of his wife’s car unnoticed this past Monday afternoon.
Bowie’s wife, Jennifer, had been working from their home in Columbia’s Kings Grant neighborhood and let Cleo outside shortly after noon. It was very windy that day, so she didn’t leave the door standing open for Cleo. Home security video showed that Cleo came back to scratch at the door and look inside, as usual, but Jennifer had gone upstairs at that time.
Before leaving the house to go to the couple’s office downtown, Jennifer called out for Cleo multiple times, but the cat didn’t come.
In the meantime, someone had come to do yard work at the house. Security video showed that when the cat couldn’t get into the house she came around and crawled under the car in the driveway. Bowie believes Cleo must have crawled up into the engine because she was afraid of the sound of the lawn equipment. The security video didn’t show any sign of Cleo crawling out from under the car at any point.
Jennifer Bowie drove from Kings Grant, on the east side of Columbia, to the Vista downtown without stopping except at stop signs and lights, Bowie said, so he doesn’t have any idea when or where she might have gotten out of the vehicle. Security video at the Bowies’ office on Lady Street didn’t show any sign of Cleo.
That means Cleo could be anywhere between east Columbia and downtown Columbia — or far beyond — at this point.
In posts on social media this week, Bowie implored anyone within sight of his message to join the mission of finding his family’s beloved Cleo.
“Got a kid playing fortnight - send them out to help find my cat!!! Fat on the couch eating chips? Go for a walk and get a shot at $2500! This is like making $15 an hour for over a month with no taxes taken out,” he wrote.
Cleo is microchipped and does not wear a collar. She “does have sagging belly fur that sways a bit when she walks,” he wrote.
Bowie said he believes Cleo would likely come to anyone who called her and would “probably come up and purr on them and rub on their leg.”
All week he’s scoured the areas around his neighborhood and downtown office, shaking a container of cat food and calling out for Cleo. They’ve put Cleo’s litter boxes outside and called every vet around. The family’s three kids — 13, 10 and 8 years old — first joked that Cleo had joined a “cat gang” or was “on a field trip,” but by the end of the week the reality of her disappearance had started to set in for everyone.
Even Lucy the black lab is “so depressed it’s ridiculous,” Bowie said. “She can feel the void for sure.”
Bowie said he knows the reward he’s offering is outsized — “A buddy of mine did reach out this morning and said, ‘$2,500 for a damn cat? Does it retrieve ducks?’” Bowie said Friday.
(Cleo does not, in fact, retrieve ducks, Bowie said. But when she comes back, he might teach her.)
But the money, he said, is not important to him. Cleo is.
If you think you’ve found Cleo, you can contact Bowie at jbowie@rfsemail.com.
This story was originally published May 5, 2023 at 5:20 PM.
