Bert Richie had climbed and descended the Rockies, survived storms in the Midwest and traversed the Appalachians — all under his own power on a bicycle loaded for an epic adventure.
Considering he was about 3,300 miles into his cross-country ride, had been in the saddle for three months and was deeply fatigued, no one would blame him for not immediately identifying the mysterious — and tiny — thing he spied on a wicked hot late July morning while riding on a rural road outside of Council, Virginia.
Perhaps he was imagining it. The sun was beating down, the midmorning air already humid. But Richie’s riding companion on that stretch, a woman named Nadine from Switzerland, saw it too.
“It was like the size of a donut and we were like ‘What is that?’”
They rolled a little closer.
“It was a kitten,” he said.
The kitten was a newborn. His eyes weren’t opening properly. He was teeming with fleas.
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“It was in a lot of distress and not looking good,” said Richie, 55, of Santa Rosa.
He and Nadine checked with a couple of nearby homes to ask if an area cat had given birth. A couple of unfriendly dogs cut that visit short. They rode to a convenience store to get the kitten milk, but it had no interest in eating.
Richie called a veterinarian in the next town. He was quoted $90 for an exam. He agreed, but now they had to get the ailing kitten there.
“It was 16 miles with 1,300 feet of climbing,” he said. “And it was really hot, like sweat-dripping-off-your-nose-every-two-seconds kind of heat. We didn’t know if the cat was going to make it.”
They rolled into Honaker, Virginia, population 1,100, and rode straight to Honaker Animal Health.
The staff dewormed the kitten, weighed him (0.4 pounds) and tried to get him rehydrated. He fed aggressively. They made a care package equipped with formula, a nursing kit, a flea comb and instructions on how to feed him on the road. They charged just $30 and Nadine happily paid the bill.
Bert Richie of Santa Rosa had been riding across the United States on his bicycle for months when he came across a newborn, nearly blind kitten. Richie cared for the kitten and carried him to the end of his ride and home to Santa Rosa. (Bert Richie)
“Our owner was here that day,” said Tessa Reynolds, receptionist at Honaker Animal Health. “She does tend to have a heart about things like this.”
Even with the medical exam, Richie wasn’t sure the cat was going to make it. And the options for leaving the kitten behind didn’t seem great.
“They told me his chances for homing or fostering were not good and I said, ‘Well, I guess he can just roll with me for a while,’” he said. “But I was trying not to get too attached to him because I didn’t know if he was going to make it.”
He put the kitten in his handlebar bag. He bought a clear plastic Tupperware lid at discount store, cut a series of holes in it and affixed it to the top of the bike bag, where he could cinch the edges to keep the lid in place.
The kitten was firmly in the cat bird’s seat on Richie’s bike.
Nadine said, “‘I think you now have a cat,’” he recalled. She was not wrong.
Bert Richie used a container with holes punched out for air to cover the handlebar bag for Ben to ride along on his bike during the last 500 miles of his cross country bike ride. Photo taken in Santa Rosa on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
The next trick was convincing the hostels, churches, fire houses and other stops along the TransAmerica Trail, which routinely open their doors to road-weary cyclists, that a kitten in questionable health would be an OK guest.
Richie recalls one fellow at a hostel in Damascus, Virginia harumphing at the idea of housing a cat.
“Then he says, ‘Let me get a look at him,’” he said. The guy ended up giving him a private room for the cost of a bunk in a dorm.
Still another proprietor gave an initial hard no — until she heard the whole story. She gave Richie a cat carrier and a place to sleep.
By this time Richie’s sister had sent him a video on how to clean a flea ridden kitten. Blue Dawn dish soap was called for, but Richie couldn’t find any in the small-town markets. When he arrived at a church to spend the night, there on the sink was a bottle of blue Dawn.
“Things like that kept happening,” he said.
Ben, now 8 -weeks-old, lives with Bert Richie after being rescued from the middle of a road in Virginia. Photo taken in Santa Rosa on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
The little fella didn’t like the bath very much, nor did he like Richie picking fleas off of him: “He fought like hell.”
But Richie held steady and eventually the kitten relented.
“After I got him clean and got those fleas off him…he fell asleep on me. I felt like that was a bond,” he said.
And the kitten, temporarily dubbed Willie — after, Nelson, the country music legend responsible for “On the Road Again” — seemed to settle into his new traveling life.
“He was pretty cool,” Richie said. “He was kind of like a little kid in a car. I think the vibration put him to sleep.”
He would regularly need to stretch his legs, go to the bathroom and wander a little bit. So Richie’s forward progress was slowed considerably. But he got used to the new pace.
“It was actually nice because the pressure was basically off on that part of the ride and it made me kind of slow down and enjoy it,” he said.
When Richie rolled into Palmyra district in Fluvanna County, Virginia, he called the local church listed in the TransAmerica Trail support list.
What Richie didn’t know was that the church had voted earlier in the year to stop hosting riders making their way across the country. They were running short on volunteers and folks needed a break. But the vote came too late to remove the contact phone number from the TransAmerica map.
So when Richie dialed, Cindy Brown picked up.
The church is no longer hosting, she said, try the local park. Richie agreed, but was promptly sent packing by a sheriff’s deputy. That was when Brown called Richie back to check on him. He relayed his situation.
“Needless to say, I said ‘I’ll be right there,’” she said.
Bert Richie of Santa Rosa had been riding across the United States on his bicycle for months when he came across a newborn, nearly blind kitten. Cindy Brown of Palmyra, Virginia took Richie and the kitten in for a number of nights to rest before finishing his journey. (Bert Richie)
Brown, a widower, brought a friend along. Just in case.
Prior to picking up Richie, Brown phoned a neighbor who was out of town. Hearing their story and banking on Brown’s good judgment, the neighbor offered her home to Richie and his four-legged friend, sight unseen.
But Brown and Richie hit it off so well that after the first night of shuttling back and forth for meals and cups of coffee, Brown told Richie to pack up his kitten and his things and come on over.
“Have you ever met someone you like immediately?” she asked. “He is just one of those guys.”
“This is a man that stopped, picked up a cat, rode hours out of his way to the vet and back to take care of the kitty, made a little pouch on the bag of his bicycle so he would carry him,” she said.
Richie and little Willie stayed long enough to be the stars of a birthday party Brown threw.
“It was six adults and six kids and it was hectic and we loved it,” she said. “And Bert comes in with a little kitty and can you imagine six little girls under the age of 10 with that kitty? Bert was showing them how to feed him with this little syringe.”
Richie and Brown connected on such a level that they have stayed in touch. In fact, Brown was a little heartbroken to find out that Willie had been renamed. He is now Ben — a family homage to Ben Gibbard, lead singer of the band Death Cab for Cutie.
Richie said his ride across the country was like that almost every step — or pedal stroke. People being kind, people being insanely generous, people being curious.
“People are really nice, basically,” he said. “Shockingly nice. Especially during a time when you don’t know where we stand politically.”
“A few people, when I said I’m from California, said ‘Oh I’m sorry,’ but I didn’t take the bait,” he said. “Politics didn’t seem to come into any discussions.”
When, on Aug. 13., Richie and the kitty reached the end of the TransAmerica Trail in Yorktown, where the York River meets Chesapeake Bay, his wife Torii was there to meet them. Richie had been on his bike since April 24 and the kitty had been his companion for 15 days.
Torii brought them both home.
Richie knew that would be the plan after he sent a photo from the road. The response was immediate and enthusiastic: “Is that our new cat?”
Richie and Torii drove the 3,000-plus miles from Yorktown back to Santa Rosa, the kitty at their side.
Since arriving at the Santa Rosa home they share with Jolene, an aging but beloved Jack Russell terrier, the kitty has settled in.
In his vet visit this week Ben weighed in at 2.2 pounds, above average. The vet called him a “firecracker.”
But Richie sees him as more akin to an ice breaker. Time and again Richie saw the kitten — and the circumstance from which he had risen — turn gruff faces soft and scowls into smiles.
In a time of increasing strife and when conflict seems the norm, the kitten gave people permission to speak to each other, to help each other, to coo over something small and helpless, and to bond over a man’s extraordinary effort to bring a fellow creature home safely.
“People take you for harmless when you are riding around with a baby cat.”
You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or [email protected]. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.