Safe return for Winky the one-eyed wonder cat

MEADOW LAKES — Winky is not the most famous cat in the Mat-Su Borough, that would be Stubbs, the ginger tabby dubbed in good fun as the honorary mayor of Talkeetna.

But as Alaska house cats go, Winky the one-eyed wonder cat is very well known.

Valley residents met him first about five years ago when he was featured as a pet of the week on longtime Valley DJ Becky Nichols’ radio program.

“Every week I wanted to take them home,” she said.

The Friday Winky was featured on the show, Nichols said she fell in love with him and decided she’d adopt him if he was still at the shelter on Monday.

Winky was in rough shape when he arrived at the shelter. He was one of four animals left in the overnight box at the Mat-Su Borough Animal Care and Regulation Shelter.

Essentially, Winky had been tortured, Nichols said. He had an upper respiratory infection, stitches in his nose, badly damaged teeth, a broken tail and one eye was hanging out of its socket and required surgery to remove.

“This is not the cat I got,” Nichols said Tuesday. “He changed.”

She drew listeners into Winky’s story, Nichols said, updating them on his progress and asking them to help pick a new name for the little guy. She liked the name Winker, suggested by a listener, but decided to change it to Winky.

Nichols said it’s been about five years since she adopted Winky, but folks still stop her and ask how Winky’s doing. Valley residents re-engaged with Winky’s story after he got outside this summer and was missing in a Meadow Lakes neighborhood for nearly a week.

He snuck outside during a Friday night dinner party in August, she said.

“I woke up and he’s just always there and he wasn’t there,” Nichols said. “I just had a sick feeling he’d gotten out.”

She posted signs in her neighborhood, put notes on her Facebook page and on the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman’s, and even wrote a letter to the editor asking for the public’s help bringing Winky home.

“We have a very strong bond, as I saved his life and he has given me a happier life,” Nichols wrote in her letter to the editor.

Her efforts were rewarded.

On the sixth day, just as she was beginning to lose hope, Nichols said a man rang her cellphone with good news.

“I think your cat is in my shed,” he said.

She hurried to the neighbor’s house and called to Winky.

“I said ‘Winky,’ and he meowed at me like I’d never heard,” she said.

Nichols took him home and he ran straight for the food and water bowls, she said.

She said she wanted to share Winky’s story as a way to say thank you to the many people who helped bring him home.

“I’m really glad he’s home,” Nichols said.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268

or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.