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Sylvan Lake cat missing three months found in Red Deer

A cat that went missing from Sylvan Lake about three months ago showed up in a particularly peculiar place early last week.

A cat that went missing from Sylvan Lake about three months ago showed up in a particularly peculiar place early last week.

‘Katie Kat’ was found in Red Deer’s West Park area and brought to Alberta Animals Services Dec. 1. She’s since been reunited with her family.

How she ended up more than 25 kilometres away from her home remains a mystery, said Dezerae Jenkins, Alberta Animal Services animal care manager.

“She just went missing one day and never came back,” she said. “Then we had this cat brought into us that was found in West Park, and she ended up having a tattoo, so I called Pathways Animal Clinic in Sylvan Lake, and they traced it. They had owner information on it.”

Jenkins subsequently contacted Katie Kat’s owners Dawn and Duane Bennie, whom she described as “flabbergasted” when they heard the news.

“They had been missing their cat for three months and they had thought the worst,” she said. “They had already gotten a new cat.”

Jenkins said Katie Kat was brought to Alberta Animal Services in good health, and suspects that she may have had someone taking care of her.

Cases of cats being reunited with their owners aren’t unheard of, said Jenkins. What makes this one particularly intriguing is the sizeable distance between where she was last seen and where she was eventually found.

“It’s amazing that they (her owners) live in Sylvan Lake and she was found in Red Deer,” she said. “Usually when we reunite people with their animals, it’s a matter of days that they’ve been missing, not months, and definitely not from a different municipality all together.”

Duane Bennie told the Red Deer Advocate last week that Katie Kat had previously never ventured too far from her home, and failed to show up for breakfast one morning.

“We just can’t believe she is still alive,” he said.

Jenkins was happy to return their cat to the Bennies free of any charge.

“They were so ecstatic,” she said. “It was quite fantastic.”