SAUK RAPIDS, Minn. — After more than a month and 8.5 miles from where he was lost, “Tom the Lost Trucker Cat” has been found and will soon be reunited with his owners.
Tom went missing in the early morning hours of Jan. 17 from his owner’s semitrailer at the Pilot Travel Center in St. Cloud. Tom was found and identified on Tuesday, Feb. 27, by the night shift crew at C4 Welding in Sauk Rapids.
St. Cloud LIVE spoke with Tom’s owners, Marie Sanchez and Angel Anthony Garcia, on Tuesday night. The couple was on the road in Oregon, hauling a load to Washington. They live in Yuma, Arizona.
“We did not give up. Every day, we thought about him and just kept checking our Facebooks, like to see if … anybody (had) seen him,” Sanchez said. “There was days when I guess I was kind of losing hope. … But it goes away. You know, like, ‘No, he has to be out there.’ ”
Knowing Tom’s personality, Sanchez said she didn’t think Tom would go too long without human interaction.
“The fact that he ended up at a welding shop and they said he was so sweet … It doesn’t surprise me,” Sanchez said. “Because Tom, he loves human interaction. He loves people.”
“We were just dog people, to be honest with you,” Sanchez said. “My husband’s family, they have two cats, and so that kind of opened us up.”
The couple adopted Tom from a rescue in their hometown in October 2022.
“Tom was the one that definitely caught our eye and stole our hearts the moment we met up,” Sanchez said.
In their time on the road, the couple has only met two other truck drivers with cats. Mostly, they see dogs.
On the night Tom went missing, the refrigerator trailer the couple was hauling suddenly shut off. Garcia went out to check on it, leaving the door of the truck cab slightly open, and that’s when Tom got out.
It was a very cold night, which made them worry about Tom’s welfare. Garcia left the truck every half-hour, calling for Tom, shaking his treat can, putting out his food and litterbox — anything to lure him back. When it got light out, Sanchez went outside with their dog to try to find some tracks.
“Sometimes when he hears her barking … he’ll come to her,” Sanchez said. “It was like he just vanished.”
“The moment we drove out of the Pilot and were at the highway, I was crying,” Sanchez said. “I was devastated. … I can’t even explain the feeling. My heart was broken.”
They were just passing through central Minnesota delivering a load and didn’t know anyone from the area. Garcia said seeing his wife cry made him put in some extra effort to find Tom, so he found a St. Cloud community social page and posted about Tom.
The missing post said Tom was a year and a half old and comes when you call his name. It also said Tom likes the sound of treats being rattled in a container and is always wearing a blue bow tie collar with a blue bell. Their post got a lot of traction, which they weren’t expecting.
“This town where we’re from is nothing like St. Cloud. In our town, it’s like, well, a cat’s just a cat,” Sanchez said. “We were very surprised at the amount of love and caring that people have for animals there. … We’re so grateful for those people.”
They got connected with someone from the area who became their go-to contact person. She made posters and signs and created a dedicated number to field tips about Tom.
St. Cloud area residents put in a lot of work to find the cat. A Facebook group went up. They were crowdsourcing, trying to find which other trucks and drivers were in the parking lot the night Tom disappeared and hoping to check security camera footage.
It was in the early morning hours of Tuesday, Feb. 27, that the couple heard their phones ring.
“I get scared. Because for me … if you got a call at that time, that’s not usually not a good thing,” Sanchez said. But it was their contact person saying they had found Tom and had scanned his ID to confirm his identity.
All of this was documented via Facebook posts and photos of Tom, which have hundreds of likes, comments and shares.
Sanchez was told that Tom was very thin and dehydrated. Volunteers took him to a veterinarian to get checked out, and he’s now staying with a trained rescue volunteer.
The rescuers played a recording of Sanchez’s voice to calm Tom down. Sanchez also talked to him while they were on the phone, and she could tell from the meowed response that it was Tom.
“I know that he knew that was his mom,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said it was a little funny to think about Tom being dirty.
“Because Tom is one of those bougie cats. … It’s rare that you’ll see Tom dirty,” Sanchez said. At home, their other cat, Dulce, is outdoors only and hunts for food.
“Tom has seen her eat field mice in front of him and he is just so disgusted. He won’t do it,” Sanchez said.
The couple isn’t sure when they’ll be able to reunite with Tom. Finances are tight. They’re in contact with the company Garcia drives for to ask if there’s a load that will take them to or through Minnesota soon. Otherwise, Sanchez said they’ll have to wait until they return home to Arizona in mid-March to find a way to get to him.
The administrators of Tom’s Facebook group started an Amazon Wish List to help support Tom until he’s reunited with Sanchez and Garcia. Excess supplies will be donated to a local rescue.
While Tom was missing, Sanchez said she regretted leash training him and taking him out of the truck cab. At first, he was scared to leave the truck.
Sanchez and Garcia have already made plans to prevent this from happening again. They’ll get him a crate for the truck cab, and Garcia has already looked for a collar with GPS.
“Because I cannot go through this again,” Sanchez said.
They’re looking forward to having him back. When the truck’s moving, Tom claims the top bunk as his space.
“If we go up there … (it’s) as if we’re invading his privacy or something,” Sanchez said. “Once the truck stops moving, he’ll jump down and you know, try to be all up in our business and play around.”
At night, he sits on the dashboard.
“He just watches all the other trucks, people passing by. He’ll stay there all night,” Sanchez said.
Tom will also soon be reunited with his furry buddies, the couple’s dog and other cat, who both noticed Tom was gone.
“They’re our babies, you know, because we don’t have kids,” Sanchez said. “So that’s why they’re everything.”
For more about Tom and how to help, visit the Tom the Lost Trucker Cat Facebook group.
