Missing California cat turns up 4 years later in Canada

Jonathan Bloom Image
ByJonathan Bloom KGO logo
Friday, March 31, 2017
Missing California cat turns up 4 years later in Canada
A California cat that was lost four years ago ended up thousands of miles away - in Canada! Now her family is ready to bring her back home to Watsonville.

WATSONVILLE, California -- A California cat that was lost four years ago ended up thousands of miles away -- in Canada! Now her family is ready to bring her back home to Watsonville.[br /][br /]"My sister found her on the street and she was about maybe 7, 8 weeks old," owner Ashley Aleman said.[br /][Ads /][br /]From the time she was a tiny kitten, BooBoo loved to wander.[br /][br /]"She would go outside, she would go missing for more than a day, but then she would always come back," Aleman said.[br /][br /]Until one day, she didn't.[br /][br /]"She had not touched her food bowl, not touched her litter box in about a week," she said.[br /][br /]That was four years ago.[br /][br /]For weeks, Aleman looked everywhere, even brought out BooBoo's best friend, Oreo the dog.[br /][br /]"Let's take him on a walk and let's see if maybe he can smell her out," Aleman said.[br /][br /]But BooBoo was gone. Or so they thought.[br /][br /]After four years, she showed up thanks to a microchip the Alemans had implanted. They knew BooBoo could get around, but they had no idea.[br /][br /][media ID="1827200" /][br /][Ads /][br /]"My mom got a phone call from a Canadian number, and she was like, 'I'm not gonna answer,'" Aleman said.[br /][br /]From the time she was a kitten, BooBoo's whole life was centered in Watsonville. But somehow, she managed to make it all the way over to a city 40 miles outside Toronto. That's more than 2,000 miles from home. And nobody's really sure how she did it.[br /][br /]"How the heck did she get all the way over there?" Aleman asked.[br /][br /]Employees at Guelph Humane Society took her in as a stray, in good spirits and well taken care of.[br /][br /]"She's really social, she's very vocal. Any time you go into the room where she's being housed, she's the first cat that you hear," Guelph Humane Society's Melissa Stolz said.[br /][br /]Aleman thinks that friendly nature lovers may have helped BooBoo cross the continent as a hitchhiker or stowaway.[br /][br /]"She was kind of known for going into people's cars," she said.[br /][Ads /][br /]Now there's one more ride ahead of her.[br /][br /]"We are having an animal protection officer drive her to Buffalo tomorrow," Stolz said.[br /][br /]Aleman's mom will pick her up and bring her home on an airplane.[br /][br /]"I wish I could have a huge conversation with her and just ask her what she was doing," Aleman said.[br /][br /]But for all she's seen of the world, BooBoo still hasn't learned to speak. So those four years will stay a mystery.[br /][br /]"I'm just gonna hug her as much as I can and probably cry," Aleman said.[br /][br /][url HREF="https://abc13.formstack.com/forms/report_a_typo" TARGET="" REL=""][b]Report a typo to the ABC13 staff[/b][/url] [img SRC="https://nextdoor.com/static/widgets/share-large.png" ALIGN="" /][/url] [url HREF="http://abc13.com/apps/" TARGET="" REL=""][media ID="1781672" /][/url]