The cat who walked 200 miles to get home
Not this one. This is Koosi, our 13-year-old ginger cat. She hates the outdoors. Show her a patch of grass and she recoils with a look of “What the hell is that!”
Koosi used to spend a lot of time on top of our tallest bookshelf, but in the last couple of years she’s put on weight and liftoff is more difficult. She can still spring from our worktable to the top of the shelf, but it would take her several attempts and every time she misses she gets embarrassed. If you’ve been around cats, you know that cats cannot bear to be embarrassed. They have to keep their dignity at all times, or someone will pay and it’s usually the human. When Koosi gets embarrassed she flies into a rage and attacks our feet.
So whenever Koosi wants to hang out on top of the shelf, she gets in our face, literally. If we’re at the computer she sits on the keyboard and sticks her face an inch away from ours. This means, “Carry me.” Have you ever stared into a cat’s eyes up close? It makes you reassess your place in the food chain. Also, if we don’t do as she says she types gibberish on our keyboard. (Her comment on our last article was aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.)
When she wants to get down from the shelf she stands on the edge and meows. This means, “Hey! Pssst!”
If Koosi ever got lost, she would find the nearest susceptible humans, make them her slaves, and order them to drive her home.
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A Cat’s 200-Mile Trek Home Leaves Scientists Guessing
By Pam Belluck
Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor house cat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.
Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.
“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”
But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.
Read Holly the Cat’s Incredible Journey in the NYT.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
January 24th, 2013 at 12:00
Awwwww…
I’d like to share a slightly off-tangent story about our cat Bamboo (all big eyes, regal, and snobbish like the vocalist). He would go out on nightly trysts with whoever’s cat, until he didn’t come back at all. When he did after a month or so, he kept meowing at my mom, looking up at her, as if confessing that he’s settling down, he’s found a nice girl, and they’ve started a family. (My mom kept her end of the conversation with pretend lecture.)
Years later, I overheard my astig brother telling his astig barkada about Bamboo. In his words: “Sayang yung pusa namin na yun. Ganda ng tindig ni Bamboo. Kaya lang pinikot kasi.”
January 24th, 2013 at 16:35
I saw this on TV last night. I bawled.
Max used to wander around before I got him neutered. The longest he’d been out was a week. It was the worst week of my life and I kept calling out his name around our block. My dad gave me a lecture about alpha male cats like Max and how it’s in their nature to wander off. After a week, Max materializes with black gunk all over his body. He looked like he came out of a sewer. He definitely smelled like it.
So after giving him a bath (which he loathed), took him to the vet the next day.
January 24th, 2013 at 19:42
We have four dogs at home and one of them just gave birth to four more. So that’s 8 dogs in total. Too many dogs. My dad decided to give away the four puppies and one of the adult ones to a a couple of families in our neighborhood. Within the week, these dogs ran away from their new homes and were scratching at our gate one early morning. My dad hauled them all back to their new owners. The dogs escaped and came back twice more after that. I’m waiting for my dad to just give up and keep them all. They obviously can’t stay away. :)
January 24th, 2013 at 21:49
1995. May matandang aso ang kapitbahay namin na halos hindi na makakita at sinusubuan na lamang upang makakain. Dumating sa yugto ng buhay ng aso na halos hindi na rin nito malunok ang kaniyang pagkain. Napagpasiyahan ng kapitbahay na patayin na lamang ang aso. Dinala nila ito sa ilang sa kabilang nayon at pinalo nang malakas sa ulo saka iniwan.
Isang umaga makalipas ang ilang araw, may pamilyar na mahinang tahol sa kanilang bakuran. Nagbalik ang sugatang matandang aso upang mamatay sa kanilang kandungan.
January 26th, 2013 at 00:30
Sounds like Homeward Bound to me.