Family’s cat was missing for a month. Then came good news — from 900 miles away
A family’s cat was missing for weeks — then came good news.
The Florida family heard from a shelter more than 900 miles away in North Carolina, where their lost pet had been found safe.
“They were very excited,” Rachael Stone, director of animal services and control for the Currituck Animal Shelter, told McClatchy News in a Sept. 3 phone interview. “They were in awe. They had kind of lost hope that they were going to find her.”
The heartwarming reunion came more than a month after the owners last saw Xena the cat. The family was taking her on a walk when she escaped from a harness over the Fourth of July weekend.
At the time, the family had been visiting Corolla, a destination on the Outer Banks barrier islands. Xena was nowhere to be found by the time the family had to return home to Boynton Beach, Florida, a roughly 60-mile drive north from Miami.
Then on Aug. 27, a cat was found injured in Corolla, about a half mile from where Xena was last seen. The cat was skinny, with an abscess on one of her feet, according to Stone.
The cat made it to the shelter, where she became known for her “vocal,” attention-loving nature. She was identified as Xena when the shelter scanned her for a microchip, a device that held contact information for her owner.
“He stated that the cat had been missing since the beginning of July and was so grateful that Xena had been found,” the shelter wrote in a Facebook post. “We were able to get her the vet care that she needed as her family made plans to drive from Florida to reunite.”
Then came the good news that Xena finally was back together with her owner. A photo posted on social media shows the special moment.
“It just reinforces how important microchips are, keeping that information correct on the microchips,” Stone said. “And the will for this family to drive all the way from Florida here to retrieve their lost pet..., it made our day.”
This story was originally published September 8, 2025 at 9:44 AM with the headline "Family’s cat was missing for a month. Then came good news — from 900 miles away."
