Antioch alumna and writer Kya Kim holds aloft her new illustrated storybook, “Boomer Lives!” she recently published with her artist husband and occasional Yellow Springs resident Pierre Nagley. “Boomer Lives!” is about the couple’s pet cat who went missing last winter in a mountain-top village in Japan, where the couple currently resides. Kim told the News that additional editions of the storybook are forthcoming. (Submitted photo)
Lost cat found in new book
- Published: June 16, 2026
It’s every pet owner’s nightmare: At the worst possible time, they dash out the door into the unknown. A frantic search begins as the heaviest snow storm in eons bears down. Shouts are muffled entirely by the deep winter night. Your four-legged friend is gone without trace or track.
For occasional village resident Pierre Nagley and Antioch alumna Kya Kim, it was Boomer they lost last February — their 6-year-old cat, who the couple brought with them to an ancient mountain-top town in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, to celebrate their birthdays.
“Usually, Boomer is afraid of the cold and of the snow, but this time, something caught his attention in the bamboo groves,” Kim told the News earlier this month.
“He went out and wasn’t coming back,” Nagley added grimly.
All told, Boomer’s seven-day escape was a harrowing experience for all involved — but one that culminated in a way the title of the couple’s new storybook succinctly encapsulates: “Boomer Lives!”
Yes, Kim and Nagley’s beloved cat survived the ordeal of getting lost amid one of Japan’s snowiest winters and atop one of the country’s wildest mountains.
To immortalize the critter having successfully cashed in on one of his nine lives, Boomer’s parents rendered his story into a book. Written by Kim and illustrated by Nagley, “Boomer Lives!” was self-published on a limited edition run earlier this year from their home in Kyoto.
From the generous donations of family and friends from around the world, the couple gleaned about 440,000 yen — or roughly $2,700 in U.S. dollars — to self-publish 50 first editions of the book. Now, with the success of that round, the couple aims to generate enough interest for a second edition, and ideally, to land a professional publisher to aid those efforts.
Nearly a dozen of the donors who brought “Boomer Lives!” to print live in Yellow Springs — and they should be receiving their copy any day now, according to Kim.
“Boomer Lives!” isn’t exactly a children’s book, but an “anyone’s book,” as Nagley said. It features more than 20 hand-painted illustrations by the Yellow Springs-grown artist and Kim’s illustrious retelling of Boomer’s “there and back again” narrative.
“Boomer Lives!” features words by Kya Kim and illustrations by Pierre Nagley. (Submitted photo)
The book’s watercolors depict sprawling Japanese landscapes, from nighttime rooftops in Kyoto to the bucolic winter tundras of Imadera — the remote village where Boomer went astray, and where Kim’s mother, Myong Hee Kim, lives. News readers may remember the elder Kim from her visit to Yellow Springs last summer with the Peace Mask Project.
While mostly vast scenes, Nagley’s illustrations also zero on the details common in rural Japanese villages. Snow-capped jizo statues — stone Bodhisattvas and guardians of travellers — line pathways and blush in the snow. The “lost cat” poster in the book closely resembles what Kim and Nagley actually hung on their neighbors’ doors — and which led to, well, Boomer living.
Kim’s narration in “Boomer Lives!” are at once delicate and weighty. Her passages carry the whimsy one would hope to encounter in a story about a free-wheeling feeline, but are saturated with anxiety and fear for his fate.
But once their real-life cat was safely home and the couple decided after all to embark on the process of authoring a storybook, Kim and Nagley hastily got to work as the winter months thawed into spring.
“It was a real marathon to get it done,” Kim said. “We felt like we were short on time. I was on break from teaching university classes, and we didn’t want the story to get old. We decided a tight turnaround would be best, and wanted to keep it fresh in people’s minds.”
Kim would churn out sections of copy and Nagley would illustrate the images his wife’s words conjured, with his own memories of the ordeal as the base.
“I made about 30 illustrations,” he said. “Of course, some didn’t make the final cut. Each illustration took one to two days. But I’d have to go back and touch some up. Some pieces didn’t match the page concept at all — I think those were from me reading the text, but forgetting about it halfway through the painting.”
The same was largely true for Kim: She also had to return to the proverbial drawing board time and again.
“Sometimes, his illustrations informed my text,” she said. “There were revisions on both sides constantly. I probably revised the story eight or nine times.”
From the successes of their Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, Kim and Nagley were able to contract the usage of what Kim called the “highest quality, highest resolution color printer in all of Tokyo” to create the pages. Their home city of Kyoto had no such tool.
Near the end of May, the couple’s efforts paid off. In their hands were 50 copies of the book into which they poured their hearts, talents and love of Boomer.
“I don’t know if I would say it has a happy ending,” Kim said of the book. “I feel like the focus of the story is more about acceptance. Throughout the story, there’s this balance between desperation to find our cat and the hopelessness in the possibility that we never would. At the same time, I wanted to include gratitude for the little signs that he was alive, and for the words of encouragement from people near and far.”
Although Boomer got the happy ending he deserved this past winter, his story is still unfolding. Nagley said he’s gained all his lost weight back and has returned to his favorite pastime of patrolling fencetops in Kyoto. In addition to gaining a new neighborhood nemesis, Napoleon, Boomer also found himself a cute kitty girlfriend named Cleo.
Sure, the little guy still gets into trouble every now and again, but Boomer’s parents still let him go outside — to let him “climb trees, chase crickets, run around in the grass, and do whatever it is that’s good for his little soul,” Kim said.
But those adventures are tales to be told another day.
To help Kya Kim and Pierre Nagley with the efforts associated with printing a second round of “Boomer Lives!” email Kim at kimberlye.k@gmail.com with a note of interest, and she said she will respond with next steps.
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