Cat escapes from shelter, returns to family who cared for him

Early last year, Ann Bosche discovered a beautiful long-haired tabby with a white-tipped tail hiding in the bushes of her family’s front garden outside her Lucedale, Mississippi home.

“What came out from under that bush was a large, beautiful cat with a white tip on his tail. I said, ‘Aren’t you a fancy thing?” Bosche told Care2.

Bosche noticed the cat appeared thin and nervous. She left him a bowl of food, which he accepted.

The next evening, the cat came back.

And the next night.

And the next.

One week later, the cat starting spending most of its time on the Bosches’ porch.

After a month of feeding the cat she called Mr. Fancy, Bosche reluctantly took her husband’s advice and drove the tomcat to a local animal shelter in the hopes of finding the feline a permanent home.

(With two cats and one dog at home — all rescue pets — the Bosches already had their hands full.)

Bosche cried the entire drive home, doubting her decision to take the cat to the shelter.

She started frequently checking the shelter’s website for news about the cat. There was none.

She later learned that the cat was never put up for adoption. In fact, he escaped just 20 minutes after she dropped him off.

One morning about a month later, Bosche heard her husband talking to someone in their kitchen.

“I looked at the clock and wondered who was at my house at 5:30 a.m.,” Bosche said. “I got up to see and what I found was nothing short of a miracle. I saw a cat, sitting at my husband’s feet, talking to him. I kept trying to focus on the cat and when he flipped his tail around, I saw proof. There was the white tip. I started crying and quietly said, ‘Oh, my baby, Hi, Fancy.’ He turned, saw me and ran to me, talking and squealing the whole way. I truly think he was saying ‘I found you! I’m home now.’”

It took him a month, but Mr. Fancy made it home.

“This cat spent a month traveling along busy streets, railroad lines, and rough neighbourhoods trying to find me,” Bosche told Care2. “I think he had a guardian angel looking out for him, directing him back to my house.”

This time, there was no sending Mr. Fancy away. He is now settled into his new home alongside the Bosches’ other animals.

“He belongs here,” said Bosche. “Mr Fancy will never want for a home, food or love again.”

In 2012, Wollie the cat made a similar shelter-escape. His elderly owners, concerned they were no longer able to care for the cat due to their failing health, tearfully gave Wollie to the Animal Rescue League in Bedform, New Hampshire.

When their health situation started to improve, the owners’ daughter returned to the shelter to secretly adopt back the cat. Before she had a chance to reunite her parents with their beloved pet, however, Wollie escaped his zippered carrier in the shelter’s parking lot and disappeared.

Three and a half days later, Wollie’s owners spotted him crossing a road near their home, about 6 miles from the shelter.

"Only he knows the story, where he went, what he was doing," said Laura Montenegro of the rescue league. “I just still can’t get over it.”

The exhausted Wollie celebrated the reunion with his owners by eating three cans of cat food and sleeping for 24 hours.