By Corey Everitt
A woman has been left happily baffled after she got the call that her cat was recover in Berwick after being missing for almost 18 months, prompting her to call for the good samaritan who found him to come forward.
Hayley, who lives in the inner city, was heartbroken to the point of giving up on seeing her beloved 17-year-old cat Booboo ever again after he went missing in June 2022.
Yet, on the past weekend she received a surprise call that Booboo was alive and well, only he was far from home, having been discovered at a vet in Berwick.
“It was completely baffling, how does a cat come back after 512 days?”
Hayley wept tears of joy to finally see her best-friend again after so much time.
She recalls the day he didn’t come back, when she thought she would never see the old man again.
“He is an inside-outside cat and would regularly take morning strolls to say hi to the neighbors, he is a real extroverted old man,” she said.
“He would choose a nice sunny spot to nap.”
“He was stolen out of the yard, even though he had a collar and was microchipped.
“I was told because of his age that he probably wandered off somewhere.”
When Booboo didn’t come back, she worked feverishly to track him down.
I wept endlessly for months, and I had emptied my savings account printing hundreds of fliers for my missing boy,” she said.
“I spoke to everyone in the neighborhood, that’s when I realised he would say hi to everyone in town.
“He was taken to somewhere in Berwick, they never took him to the vet because they would of seen his microchip and that he was mine.”
Despite her efforts, Booboo didn’t return home and she heard no word of his whereabouts.
After a year, Hayley was heartbroken to accept that she may never see her old man again.
Yet, this past weekend a local man in Berwick discovered a disheveled looking cat that made him concerned enough to take him to the vet.
Little did this person know that they were miraculously reuniting Booboo with Hayley, as his microchip was scanned and it was found Booboo was far from home.
The vet called about Booboo and Hayley was in shock.
“I didn’t expect to see him again, I have never heard of a missing older cat coming back after such a long time,” she said.
Booboo’s return comes at the perfect timing, only weeks after Hayley decided to make the big step to get a kitten.
“It’s great timing, just three weeks after I had got a kitten, so in that time I now have two cats,” she said with a laugh.
“I feel he came back out of spite for that.”
While Hayley enjoys the company of Booboo once again and gets him checked up after a long absence from the vet, she is still wondering who it was that brought her cat back to her.
“The vet didn’t get a name, they said he seemed like a really lovely person who was concerned for the cat,” she said.
“I need help to find the beautiful soul who saw Booboo wandering aimlessly and knew something wasn’t right, I want to find him and thank him for the gift he has given me.”
What Hayley knows of the good samaritan is that he was described as a young man.
If you are the good samaritan or know the man who is, please contact the Gazette at 5945 0666 or email editor@starnewsgroup.com.au.
