Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 3, 1991 TAG: 9103030119
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Bo's there.
You know that somewhere in this teeming city, in a railyard or an alley, in the cellar of an abandoned house, huddled from the sleet, he lurks.
Bo's here.
If you're like most, you've probably thought you caught a glimpse of him - dashing from the spray of headlights or slinking through the weeds of a trash-strewn lot. You rubbed your eyes and rationalized him away. You'd worked too hard, or slept poorly.
Bo's image.
But without doubt there can be no faith. You are among the believers.
Bo lives.
"I wonder about him," Gina Chapman says. "I think about him when it's real cold or raining. I wonder where he is, or if he's still alive."
Gina lives in Greensboro, N.C. It was from her second-story apartment porch that Bo leaped into his odyssey and our consciousness.
Monday marks a year that Bo plunged.
It was a frigid night in Greensboro, and Bo sought warmth. He crawled onto a warm car engine and slept. The next day, six cylinders of internal combustion fury fired to life. Bo froze and thundered into history.
Bo is a Siamese cat.
He rode that fateful day from Greensboro to Roanoke, and when the unwitting driver of that car and engine paused at a filling station on Hershberger Road to check the oil, Bo made like a Republican Guardsman. Ran like the wind.
Gina Chapman, 27, and her husband, Duncan, looked for Bo everywhere around their apartment complex in Greensboro. After a week came their first big break in the case. The motorist stepped forward to report that Bo was at large in Roanoke.
The Chapmans came to town. They posted signs.
And for 60 days or so, everywhere we looked there was a Siamese cat on the prowl. They spotted Bo in Salem, they followed him near Hollins. They tracked him in Southeast. In Southwest, on Hershberger, off Williamson.
Either the roaming Siamese cat population exploded overnight or Bo was everywhere.
Everywhere but home.
A year is gone now. Gina Chapman turns 28 today. She has a 6-week-old daughter, Lauren Ray. She and Duncan and child have moved from the second-floor apartment attached to Bo's launching pad into a house all their own.
Forlorn Tiffany, Bo's Siamese mom, has been exiled to live with in-laws.
"The final chapter on Bo?" Gina asks. "It hasn't been written. The nicest man I've ever talked to thinks he's seen Bo. He even sent me a picture."
The nicest man is Bill Miller of Houston Avenue in Northwest Roanoke.
"Funny you should call," he said last week. "I saw that cat today for the first time in a month or six weeks."
Siamese. Very timid. A drifter.
"I don't know how you'd ever catch this cat," Miller says. "But I call him Bo."
Keeping the Bo faith.
by CNB