Updated July 17, 2026 04:11 pm
On June 2, a domestic cat named Fridge escaped from his owners’ tent at a campground near Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park and disappeared into the desert.
The three-year-old cat survived alone for 39 days in a backyard, enduring high temperatures, lack of food and water, and the presence of predators. Fridge’s survival surprised his owners and raised questions about how an indoor cat managed to survive for nearly six weeks in the Colorado backcountry.
“There’s no way this little cat could survive that long without food, without water,” said his owner, Na-Kee Bullen. Outside. “We had given up hope at that time.”
Fridge Ordeal by the Numbers
- Fridge spent 39 days alone in the backcountry
- Na-Ki Bullen woke up at 5:30 a.m. on June 2 to find the tent broken and the refrigerator missing.
- Bullen and her boyfriend searched for eight hours before finding their way back onto the road in Minnesota
- The fridge lost nearly three pounds in weight in the high desert, from nearly nine pounds to just six pounds
- Temperatures in the area ranged from the low-ninety degrees during the day to the high forty degrees Fahrenheit at night.
A frantic drive back to Colorado
Bullen, who lives in Minnesota, woke up around 5:30 a.m. on June 2 to find her tent door open and both of her cats missing. Louise, her nine-year-old cat, was right outside, but the fridge was nowhere to be seen. Bullen and her boyfriend, Jefferson Howard, spent the next eight hours exploring the surrounding area. The couple drove up and down the nearby streets, calling the fridge’s name and handing out treats. They tried to book another night at the campground to extend their search, but to no avail.
Then, the two made the hardest decision of the trip: They posted signs, called the local shelter, and hit the road back to Minnesota without a fridge.
“I could not have imagined even in my wildest dreams that this could happen,” Howard wrote on his Instagram.. “It was horrible and felt like a piece of me was gone.”
On July 11, Bullen, who is a tattoo artist, was at work, about to start a tattoo, when Howard broke down crying. “Go out, go out. I have something to tell you,” he told her. His first thought was that someone had died. Instead he told her, “Someone called. I think they found the fridge.”
A photo of the shelter confirmed that it was a fridge. Bullen assigned her appointment to another artist, collected her things, and drove 16 hours through the night to Colorado’s San Luis Valley where the animal shelter is located. She was standing at the doors of the facility when staff opened them the next morning.
The fridge was weak, he said. Cats typically weigh eight to nine pounds and are weaned by the age of six. When Bullen took her to the vet, they found that her paws were injured, her nails were shortened, and there was dried blood under her toes that was not hers.
“They’re like, she might be killing rats or maybe little rabbits,” Bullen said. “I wish I had a little GoPro on her so I could have seen what she was doing, what kind of animals she came across and how she survived.”
Domesticated cats are adept at surviving outdoors. A 2023 study Free-living cats were found to eat more than 2,000 different species of prey, ranging from rodents to birds to small lizards and insects. A 2026 follow-up study found that when cats eat insects, about 80 percent of the menu consists of beetles.
On what crunchy insects could the fridge survive? according to National Park Service, The Great Sand Dunes are home to over 1,000 known species of arthropods such as insects and spiders, including at least five beetle species Found nowhere else on Earth.
Fridge also had to keep an eye on him. The park is also home to coyotes, mountain lions, black bears, bobcats, and golden eagles.
“Driving to that campsite, we saw deer, coyotes, all different types of animals,” Bullen said. Outside. “I think, how did you survive for 40 days with all these predators? The whole world is against you at this point.”
At the time of Fridge’s disappearance, Bullen and Howard were driving back to Minnesota from California when they stopped at Sand Dunes. Before the trip, Bullen was worried that Fridge would wander, and she purchased harnesses for both of her cats. Instead, Fridge would sit on camping chairs next to his owners while Louis wanted to explore.
“She was definitely like ‘I want to be near my mom,'” Bullen said. “Someone must have scared him into running away like that.”
Life after the backcountry
Whatever Frizz endured there, he is still as affectionate as ever. The moment she came out of the carrier at the shelter, all she wanted to do was curl up between her owners.
However, one thing changed. “She wasn’t so food-motivated before, and now she’s much more food-motivated,” Bullen said. “When you’re cutting chicken she’ll climb up on the counter and steal a chicken breast and make off with it.”
As far as camping with the cats again, Bullen isn’t sure his heart will be able to accept it. But if she does, she has a plan: “Definitely AirTags. It was a big mistake, that I didn’t have them,” she said, as well as getting the cats to sleep in their harnesses.
“Fridge is a fighter,” Bullen said. “He really is.”
Another Colorado cat cheats death
Fridge isn’t the only Colorado cat who has cheated death. On July 11 – the same day Bullen got her call – a seven-year-old Denver cat named Bones climbed out of a partially open truck window on Interstate 70 and jumped out of the vehicle while it was moving at highway speeds.
according to summit daily, He survived, and the Apple AirTag on his collar helped searchers narrow down his whereabouts to the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel. The Colorado Department of Transportation halted traffic for the rescue, and Bones was back with his family by 5:30 a.m.
