STRAYS

When the headline ‘Homeless Man Travels 3,600 Miles to Take Cat Back Home’ caught Britt Collins' eye she knew she had to find this man named Michael King. His story was filled with love, loss, adventure, mystery and tenderness.

Michael King had given up on his former life as a chef and was homeless living on the streets of Portland, Oregon when he found a stray cat he named Tabor. Over the next ten months, Michael and Tabor traveled across the West from Oregon to the beaches of Ventura, California to Montana where he found out Tabor had an owner in Portland still looking for her.

STRAYS is the story of a man who didn’t know he needed saving and the cat, Tabor, who saved him. It recounts the journey of a lost man and a lost cat and the deep and undeniable bond between them, and how the love of this intrepid creature helped a broken man turn his life around. The story, set against the spirit-lifting settings of the American West, shows how a slightly magical cat gave a homeless drifter a glint of hope, and how the bond between humans and animals is much deeper than we can possibly imagine.

Britt Collins is a LA based British journalist and a regular contributor for The Guardian, Sunday Times, The Irish Independent, and other publications. She has walked with lions in the Kalahari Desert, received death threats from fur traders and has written investigative stories on everything from the European can-and-dog fur trade to Ugandan aids orphans. Over the last 20 years she has fostered hundreds of stray cats off the London streets.