In a heart-warming tale of hope and resilience, a New Brunswick woman has been joyfully reunited with her beloved cat Peter after he went missing five long years ago. Morgan Day of St. John had made peace with never seeing her feline friend again after he disappeared half a decade earlier. Little did she know, Peter was just biding his time for an unlikely but celebrated homecoming.
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It was a seemingly long-shot when Day’s mother spotted a social media post about a scraggly stray brought in by the local rescue group Red Head Strays. But some of the details seemed to match up with Peter. Despite his rough condition after years on the streets, the friendly orange tabby had a few distinctive traits that made Day’s heart leap. Could it really be her Peter after all this time?
After connecting with the rescue and getting Peter treated for fleas, malnourishment and other ailments at a local veterinary hospital, the truth became clear. Detailed comparisons confirmed this battered stray was indeed Morgan’s beloved house cat who had wandered off as a young kitten many years ago.
On Saturday, the pair enjoyed an emotional reunion half a decade in the making. Peter may have used up several of his nine lives out there, but he kept the most important one aside to return to his original family. “He deserves this happy ending,” Day said of the 14-year-old’s hard-earned comeback story.
For the volunteers at Red Head Strays, Peter’s reunion represents the very best of what they do. Since 2015, they’ve helped over 2,000 stray or abandoned cats and kittens through medical care, fostering, adoption or returning them to their colonies through trap-neuter-return. As director Diane Fox puts it, “It’s the best feeling you’ve ever felt in your life” to let a healthy stray cat go from the trap and watch it “run out 100 miles an hour” back to its home territory.
While the odds of such a reunion after so many years seemed remote, the Day household is understandably overjoyed to have closed this long-separated chapter of their family story. Peter may have sowed his oats roaming for half a decade, but his outdoor adventuring has definitively come to an end. This well-traveled former stray will enjoy his golden years in the safety, comfort and belly rubs he surely missed while living rough.
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