It’s always very difficult when an animal goes missing. You know your pet is out there, helpless and alone.
But it’s even more difficult when you lose them far away from home. Normally you can spend days and weeks searching your neighborhood, putting up signs, etc., but it’s much tougher to look for them across the country.
That was the case for one truck driver who lost his beloved cat while in another state, but got miraculous news just when he thought all was lost.
Matthew B. is a truck driver based out of Georgia. He travels a lot as part of his job, but luckily had a partner to keep him company on those long lonely trips: a cat named Ashes.
Together, they traveled around the country via Matthew’s delivery routes, Lollypop Farm reported.
But when they were in Springfield, Ohio a few months ago, their trip seemed to come to an end.
While at a truck stop, Ashes got loose and ran off. Matthew looked everywhere, but ultimately had to continue on his route. But he wasn’t giving up on the cat: over the next few months, Matthew rearranged his routes so he could keep returning to that same spot to continue his search.
Sadly, he found no trace of the cat.
But it turns out, someone else did.
A woman named Kimberly T. was also traveling across country, moving from the West Coast to Rochester, New York. Along the way, she ended up at the same travel stop where Ashes was lost.
It was there, on an icy cold day, that she found the cat. “He was trying to not put his feet down on the ground, it was so cold,” Kimberly told Lollypop Farms.
She knew she had to do something. She searched around the area for an owner, but found no one.
So she took the cat herself. Once again, Ashes served as someone’s much-needed travel companion, taking the long ride with Kimberly to New York. In a funny coincidence, Kimberly unwittingly gave the cat a name pretty similar to his real one: “Smokey.”
“It was a difficult move for me,” Kimberly said. “Smokey was cuddled up in my lap the whole way home.”
Arriving in her new home in upstate New York, Kimberly soon took Ashes to Lollypop Farm, who found a microchip on the cat identifying Matthew as the owner.
Miraculously, after months of waiting, Matthew got the call telling him that Ashes was safe and sound.
“I had been thinking about Ashes every day,” Matthew said.
They were on opposite ends of the country, but luckily Matthew was soon able to coordinate his work schedule to drive up to New York.
After months apart, the two shared a tearful reunion: “It’s my Christmas miracle,” said Matthew.
It’s a heartwarming story, but also one with an important reminder: get your pets microchipped.
“Without it, I wouldn’t have ever gotten him back,” Matthew said. “If you love your pet, you just have to chip them. The women that found him saved his life, but the microchip brought him home.”
It’s extremely important to microchip your pets! You never know when a pet might go missing at the worst possible time—and they make happy reunions like this possible.
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