MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WBOY) — Halie Kutscher and her family moved to Morgantown from Bridgeport on May 21.
As the moving trucks were being loaded, the family’s cat, Oliver, who originally came from the Humane Society of Harrison County, accidentally got outside and started playing with the family’s dog in the front yard.
“Last time I saw Oliver, Sasha had chased him up into a tree. We were just kind of finalizing the U-Haul, getting it filled up, and then we closed it,” Kutscher said. “That was the last time I saw Oliver.”
That would be the last time the family saw Oliver for several weeks. However, the family didn’t lose hope of finding him.
“We still had ownership of the house. We listed it vacant, so until it was under contract, we would continually go back and check up every week. My husband kept food out for the first week, would constantly go out and call for him. He was always pretty good about responding to being called,” Kutscher said.
After the house was sold in July, the family let the new owners know of the situation in case Oliver had shown up, and they agreed to help them.
“We were still kind of hopeful that maybe he would turn up,” Kutscher said.
Well, Oliver did turn up on Sunday, but not in Bridgeport.
“My husband looks over the railing. In our neighbor’s yard, there’s little steps that kind of go up, and there’s an orange cat sitting on it. He said, ‘oh my god, that looks like Oliver,'” Kutscher said. “I run in the house, run to the basement, run out the back door, down into the grass. He sees me coming, and he starts running to me. We’re running to each other like a slow-motion-movie scene, and he lets me scoop him right up.”
That means Oliver made the trek from Bridgeport to Morgantown; a span of nearly 40 miles.
“It was him. He was wearing the same flea collar I put on him, and I remember cutting it at an angle, and that same angle cut was on that flea collar,” Kutscher recalled.
Kutscher plans to take the cat to the vet on Thursday to get checked out and verify the microchip to confirm that it is Oliver. In the meantime, this happy family is now back together.
Kutscher highlighted the entire situation in a post on Facebook.
