NEWSLETTER

Excerpted from The New Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LAURA PARK

The Cat Came Back:
15 Cats Who Traveled Long Distances to Return Home


NINJA—850 miles

Brent Todd and his family moved from Farmington, Utah, to Mill Creek, a suburb of Seattle, in April 1996, taking with them their eight-year-old tomcat, Ninja. After a week, Ninja jumped over the fence of the new yard and disappeared. More than a year later, on May 25, 1997, Ninja turned up on the porch of the Todds’ former home in Farmington, waiting to be let inside and fed. He was thin and scraggly, but his distinctive caterwaul was recognized by the Todds’ former neighbors, Marilyn and John Parker. Mrs. Parker offered to send Ninja back to the Todds, but they decided to let him stay.


MINOSCH—1,500 miles

In 1981, Mehmet Tunc, a Turkish “guest worker” in Germany, went home with his cat and family for vacation. At the Turkish border, Minosch disappeared. Sixty-one days later, back on the island of Sylt, in northern Germany, the family heard a faint scratching at the door. It was a bedraggled Minosch.


RANULPH—300 miles

Ranulph, an eight-year-old black tomcat, was named after the explorer Ranulph Fiennes. He justified his name after his owner Gill Bray gave him to a friend in Consett in County Durham, Scotland. He disappeared but showed up a year and a half later on the doorstep of Bray’s home in Archiestown on Speyside. He arrived just before his former owner was going to move to a new house closer to her work in Glasgow. He had lost about half his weight.


SILKY—1,472 miles

Shaun Philips and his father, Ken, lost Silky at Gin Gin, about 200 miles north of Brisbane, Australia. That was in the summer of 1977. On March 28, 1978, Silky turned up at Philips’s house in a Melbourne suburb. According to his owner, “He was as thin as a wisp and stank to high heaven.”


HOWIE—1,200 miles

In 1978, this three-year-old Persian walked home from the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, to Adelaide—a trip that took a year. Said his owner, 15-year-old Kirsten Hicks, “Although his white coat was matted and filthy and his paws were sore and bleeding, Howie was actually purring.”


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