Annie Rosales is living through a surreal, impossible moment after being reunited with a beloved cat that had spent 2 1/2 years living off the land just outside Yellowstone National Park.
Rosales was undertaking a cross-country move from San Francisco to New York with her husband, daughter, and two cats in July 2023 when they stopped to stay with friends in Cody.
During their brief stay, their female cat Lily escaped and couldn’t be found.
“We stayed an extra day and stayed up all night trying to get her, but she’s a cat,” Rosales said. “We had hope, but she’s a cat. She’s not going to come when she’s called.”
After making the heart-wrenching decision to move on, the Rosales family settled into their new lives in New York. Lily was long gone but not forgotten.
Then in March, the family got a text from an unknown Wyoming number.
“It was a picture of a cat, and they asked if we knew this cat because it’s wearing a collar with our number on it,” Rosales said. “I just didn't believe it when I saw the picture. It was Lily.”
The next week, Rosales flew to Cody and was reunited with Lily.
Nobody knows how a house cat from San Francisco survived more than two years in an area with bears, wolves and other predators, but she did it.
“When I got her into the hotel and I opened the door of her pet crate, she sniffed me for a second, then she came right up, rubbed up against me, and was purring and meowing,” Rosales said. “It was unreal.”
Into The Wild
Rosales has owned Lily since 2019. The cat was comfortably living in San Francisco until the family decided to relocate to New Rochelle, New York.
“We bought an old RV and fixed it up,” she said. “We road-tripped across with our 2-year-old daughter and two cats, Lily and Klay. It was a great trip.”
On their journey east, the Rosales family stopped to visit a family they knew who lived on a ranch along the South Fork of the Shoshone River between Cody and the East Entrance of Yellowstone.
Nobody knows how it happened, but the night before they were planning to depart, Lily snuck out of the RV.
Rosales said they spent an extra day on the ranch doing whatever they could to find Lily.
“We just couldn’t find her,” she said. “It was really hard to look for her, because it was a big ranch right next to the river, and there’s a lot of wildlife out there.”
After a day of searching, they had to make an extremely difficult decision.
“We ended up having to drive away,” Rosales said. “We were really heartbroken driving away and leaving her there.”
Rosales held onto some hope.
She was told there were several stray cats that managed to eke out a living in the area, so maybe Lily had the wherewithal to keep herself alive long enough to be found and reunited with her family.
“We had hope that someone would get her,” she said. “But that never happened.”
Days turned to weeks, which turned to months. The family that the Rosales had stayed with moved away, and there wasn’t any news of Lily for more than two years.
Somehow Lily Returned
In December 2025, Rebecca and Jack Deal moved to a property along the South Fork River, 3.5 miles from the spot where Lily went missing.
There, they quickly made the acquaintance of two stray cats.
“The one cat was super-friendly,” Rosales said. “It would come into their house and play with them. The other cat was very shy and timid and would hide under the porch when they came to eat.”
It took a while for the Deals to get a close enough look at the second cat to realize she was wearing a collar. Thinking the collar looked tight, the Deals managed to capture the cat and bring it inside.
That’s how they got Chris Rosales’s number and sent him the picture of Lily. But before they could confirm with Lily’s owners, Lily wanted out.
“She really wanted to go back out, so they let her back out,” Rosales said. “We told them, as soon as you can bring her back inside, I'll fly there and come get her. So, the Deals and their neighbor, Mark, made catching Lily their duty."
Catch The Cat
Trapping Lily a second time wasn’t easy. A trap was put out every night after the Deals reached the Rosales, but Lily was adept at avoiding capture.
“She would go into the trap, and one night it closed, but she got out of it somehow,” Rosales said. “She was evading their attempts to bring her back inside.”
After the Deals returned from out of town, Rebecca Deal thought she might have a better chance of getting close to Lily, and she seemed more comfortable with her than with Jack or Mark.
“Lily had connected with Rebecca,” she said. “She came close enough up to allow Rebecca to pet her and would sit on her lap.”
Since the old trap failed, the Lily Capture Team concocted a new contraption that would make any Looney Tunes character proud: a large box propped up by a taut fishing line.
A camera was set up to alert them when Lily was under the box. Then it was a mad dash to cut the fishing line and safely contain Lily.
“It was so sweet,” Rosales said. “I can't believe the kindness that we got from that family, and all the time they put in to trying to catch her again.”
Three weeks ago, Rosales got a text from the Deals. Lily was safely captured and inside their home.
Rosales filmed the moment when they woke up their now 4-year-old daughter Norita to tell her that their “Lilycat" had been captured.
“Did they catch her?” she asked. “I want her. Is it gonna take you long to drive there?”
Rosales was on a flight to Cody the next day.
Lilycat Back
Rosales’s flight got into Cody around 10 p.m. The Deals were there to greet her, and waiting in the back of their car was the long-lost Lily.
“She was in a little crate in the back of their car,” she said. “She meowed, and they did say she was being a little more vocal than she had been.”
Rosales let Lily out of her crate once they were alone in their hotel room. She didn’t know exactly what to expect.
“She had been out on her own for two and a half years,” she said. “Jack was nervous because she was really frisky when they caught her, so I didn’t know if it would take her a really long time to warm up to me.”
Within a minute of being out of the crate, Lily was purring, mewing, and eagerly seeking affection from Rosales. It was like no time had passed.
The Deals took Rosales back to the airport the next day. Lily was going to a new house, but it was still the same loving home.
“There were a lot of tears in the hotel that night,” Rosales said.
Back To Before
Lily is now settling into her new home in New Rochelle. In addition to being reunited with Chris and Norita, Lily got to meet Rosales’s 2-year-old, Marco.
“I was pregnant when she ran away, so she never met my son,” she said. “She wasn’t too excited that we had one kid, let alone two, but she’s definitely warmed up to them.”
Their second cat, Klay, also got a reunion that quickly settled back into a familiar routine.
“They were very close,” Rosales said. “Klay was always very affectionate and liked to be right on top of her, and Lilly always played hard to get. As soon as they reunited, they were having their typical interaction.”
Lily has had a visit to the veterinarian since arriving in New York and received a clean bill of health. How she survived the South Fork is anybody’s guess.
“I just keep looking at her, thinking about what she’s been through,” Rosales said. “What were you doing for that long? What have you seen? What did you have to do?”
Everyone’s best guess is that Lily managed to find enough safe places, like barns or sheds, to seek shelter and find food. Rosales wouldn’t be surprised if several families along the South Fork helped Lily during all that time.
“It would be cool to see if there's anyone else who interacted with her,” she said. “I’d love to piece together the whole story of who’s seen her and what she’s been doing for the last two and a half years.”
The collar that brought Lily back is still comfortably around her neck. Best of all, Rosales said her long-lost cat has shown little to no interest in going back outside since arriving in New York.
“She's the same exact cat that she was when we lost her,” she said.
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
