At first glance, there is no telling how many of this cat's 9 lives have been lived, but we can tell you the list of places where he's lived is long and it's a story that's making Snowball quite the cat's meow.
A crate at the Morris Animal Refuge in Philadelphia is Snowball's temporary home, a pit stop, really, on an unexpected journey that covers 4 states, 2 coasts, and involves several changes in cat custody. Oh, and one computer.
See, Snowball was born in Kentucky, but soon after, started a new life in Syracuse, with his brother under the watchful eye of a loving little girl.
Until one day, he and his brother got out.
Someone ending up finding Snowball and took him in; she even took him with her when she moved from Syracuse to Philadelphia to go to college. But with college life being what it is, the cat didn't quite make the cut.
So owner number 3 gave snowball to caretaker number 4, who brought him to the refuge.
To review, we began, remember, in Kentucky, then moved to Syracuse, then to Philadelphia, then to the shelter, where the story of this 2-year-old takes a high tech turn for home.
When Snowball was brought in to the refuge, he was scanned for a microchip and sure enough, there was one.
When Snowball was scanned, his owners, the ones who lost him in Syracuse, were found...in Oregon.
It was a phone call that little girl's mother never expected.
"She could not believe it. She was ecstatic, she was in shock. She gave up hope and then I called," adoption coordinator Kerri Taylor said.
And so, Snowball is heading home, to yet another place he's never been before, and, he hopes, to stay a while.
It will be a reunion that will be a total surprise to that now 10-year-old girl.
We won't let the cat out of the bag, so long as they don't let him out of their sight.
