NEW YORK – A little kindness, a lot luck and some modern technology all combined in Ulster County to reunite a cat with her family, two years and 700 miles from when and where she went missing.
The sweet-natured tortoiseshell cat turned up a while ago outside an Ulster Savings Bank branch, explained the Ulster County SPCA. The bank employees took to feeding the cat and nicknamed her ‘Penny’.
Just last week one of the employees decided to take the cat to the SPCA to be spayed and to get her shots.
It didn’t take long at all for medical director Brian Schoonmaker to realize the cat had already been spayed, and so, the next step was to check for a microchip to see if the cat had a family.
The UCSPCA runs a trap-neuter-release program, and workers will routinely check the hundreds of cats that pass through the program for chips to make sure they aren’t someone’s lost pet.
“Sure enough, we found the owner’s name and address, and we knew we were on to something,” he stated.
The address was all out of date, but Schoonmaker used Facebook to further his investigation, which led him to a military family that had been stationed in North Carolina when their cat – Izzy – went missing back in 2014.
Even more interestingly, it just so happened that the family was vacationing in Long Island.
The mom found a babysitter and immediately drove to the Ulster County SPCA the next day – Thursday, Aug. 11 – to reclaim Izzy. The family wishes to remain completely anonymous, so UCSPCA hasn’t released any more detail about them, said spokeswoman Colleen Lanigan. But they’re definitely happy to be reunited with Izzy.
“Currently Izzy is home and happy, reported to be lounging on a cat tree and enjoying her favorite flavor of Fancy Feast,” the Ulster County SPCA claims.
