Pi, the plucky cat, is the talk of Nelson, B.C., after surviving a 26-day ordeal on a narrow ledge.

Pi apparently spent 26 days on a narrow ledge.
(CBC)

His relieved owners Jane Hansell and partner Charles Dawes gave Pi up for dead last month when he didn't return after they let him out for a morning walk.

"We let him out on a Sunday morning at about nine o'clock and he never leaves for more than a three-hour period,'' Hansell told CBC News.

But as the hours stretched into days, Hansell and Dawes went through the grim routine of plastering pictures of Pi on mail boxes, and making repeated calls to SPCA.

Eventually, they began to give up hope, thinking that he must have wound up on the losing end of a fight with a local coyote or cougar.

But to their surprise, Pi was rescued by a kayaker, who spotted him perched on a narrow ledge near the edge of the water. That was almost a month after he went missing on Nov. 4.

The kayaker relayed the message to the local SPCA, who had heard about the missing cat and phoned Hansell and Dawes to tell them that it might be theirs.

He was. It turned out that the cat had been stranded on a cliff ledge around the corner from a neighbour's property, out of sight and too far away for his cries to be heard.

Having survived for 26 days without food or water, he was hungry, well under weight, and lucky to be alive.

"I was surprised by how skinny and light he was,'' said Dawes.

The cat is now doing fine because the couple heeded the advice of the SPCA by feeding him small morsels in a bid to prevent his system from going into shock.