South Carolina cat missing since 2013 shows up in California

Kevin the cat disappeared from his Anderson, S.C. home in the fall of 2013.

The orange house cat — he had been rescued from a shelter just months earlier — had gone outside, as he often did, but failed to return.

His owner, Cheryl Walls, eventually assumed he was gone for good.

Earlier this month, however, an inspector at the Arizona-California border heard meowing inside a U-Haul trailer that had just been driven across the country.

He found Kevin, dehydrated but in relatively good health.

The cat’s microchip helped track down Walls.

"I assumed someone must have picked him up," Walls told the Associated Press. “Now he has seen more of the country than me.”

Today, Kevin will be making the trip from Palm Springs back to North Carolina.

"We have handled some pets with crazy back stories, and this is one more for the list," Riverside County Department of Animal Services Director Robert Miller said.

"The good news is we know the owner, she wants her pet back, and we’ll make that happen."

No one knows how Kevin ended up hitching a ride in a U-Haul, but we’re assuming his days of playing outside are over.

Last April, Etobicoke cat owners were reunited with their pet eight years after he went missing.

Thanks to an embedded microchip, Angus the black-and-white cat was returned to his owners weighing a pound more and just as loving as ever.

"We don’t know where he’s been," owner Mary Dalton told the Brampton Guardian. “You just have to use your imagination.”

Dalton believed Angus was getting care during his eight year adventure away from home.

"He must have been in somebody’s house, because he’s in such good shape," she told CBC News.

And in January, 2014, a Las Vegas, Nev., woman was reunited with her family’s missing cat a whopping 12 years after he disappeared.

"A good Samaritan found a kitty wandering around in the area of Decatur and Flamingo on Sun. They brought him here. We scanned him for a microchip and we were able to track down his owner. The kitty, whose name is Spaz, has been missing for 12 years!!!" the West Flamingo Animal Hospital posted on Facebook.

Moral of these stories: Get your pets microchipped.