Battle Rock Charter School fourth graders Presley Wilkerson and Elijah American Horse made an unusual discovery on the hill behind their school last week.
A tired, yet affable white and gray cat approached the school. While it was possible the cat belonged to a nearby resident, this was one they had not seen before.
He was brought into the classroom and fed some spaghetti, the students’ school lunch that day.
The cat’s collar read “Volt,” and a phone number was visible on it. School staff soon learned that Volt, a 3-year-old rescue, had been missing for roughly two weeks after disappearing from a campsite on County Road N. 22 miles north of the school.
His owners, a married couple from Brighton who serve in the U.S. Air Force, were visiting Canyons of the Ancients National Monument on the last leg of a vacation when Volt went missing.
Cody and Amanda Storment usually brought Volt and their Samoyed dog, Max, along with them on camping trips.
Volt would often be let out at night for a short time and had always returned on his own. Concerns grew when an hour had passed and Volt had not come back.
The couple searched a 4-mile radius around the campsite for two days, to no avail. They posted reward signs everywhere they could.
The students found Volt last week.
“We called them out of the blue, and they were just over the moon,” said Battle Rock teacher Moqui Mustain-Fury. “It’s a really friendly cat. It’s the type of cat that does well with the kids.”
Cody Storment, recently returning from assignment in Hawaii to Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, made the trip back to Southwest Colorado to reunite with Volt and take him home.
Students had just finished reading a book about Journey, a gray wolf that was tracked as he migrated more than a 1,000 miles from Northeastern Oregon to Northern California.
“The kids were able to really look at the fact that this cat’s journey was a little bit like this wolf,” Mustain-Fury said. “He’s an inspiration for us. We’ve gotten quite a few miles out of his adventures.”
Teachers also encouraged students to write their versions of Volt’s story.
Storment told students Tuesday a little bit more about the cat they had taken in.
“When he was a baby he was just a little fuzzball,” Storment said. “He just looked like static. His hair completely looked like static. So that’s why we called him Volt.”
Volt had never been lost before.
“We were very scared, very worried,” Storment said. “Because we knew that there were mountain lions and coyotes and everything else.”
The Storments intend to donate $550 to the school.
“I appreciate you guys taking care of him and giving him shelter and love and affection,” Storment said.
