Missing California cat turns up 4 years later in Canada

WATSONVILLE, Calif. (WPVI) -- A California cat that was lost four years ago ended up thousands of miles away -- in Canada! Now her family is ready to bring her back home to Watsonville.

"My sister found her on the street and she was about maybe 7, 8 weeks old," owner Ashley Aleman said.

From the time she was a tiny kitten, BooBoo loved to wander. "She would go outside, she would go missing for more than a day, but then she would always come back," Aleman said.

Until one day, she didn't.

"She had not touched her food bowl, not touched her litter box in about a week," she said. That was four years ago.

For weeks, Aleman looked everywhere, even brought out BooBoo's best friend, Oreo the dog. "Let's take him on a walk and let's see if maybe he can smell her out," Aleman said.

But BooBoo was gone. Or so they thought.

After four years, she showed up thanks to a microchip the Alemans had implanted. They knew BooBoo could get around, but they had no idea.

"My mom got a phone call from a Canadian number, and she was like, 'I'm not gonna answer,'" Aleman said.

From the time she was a kitten, BooBoo's whole life was centered in Watsonville. But somehow, she managed to make it all the way over to a city 40 miles outside Toronto. That's more than 2,000 miles from home. And nobody's really sure how she did it.

"How the heck did she get all the way over there?" Aleman asked.

Employees at Guelph Humane Society took her in as a stray, in good spirits and well taken care of. "She's really social, she's very vocal. Any time you go into the room where she's being housed, she's the first cat that you hear," Guelph Humane Society's Melissa Stolz said.

Aleman thinks that friendly nature may have helped BooBoo cross the continent as a hitchhiker or stowaway.

"She was kind of known for going into people's cars," she said.

Now there's one more ride ahead of her. "We are having an animal protection officer drive her to Buffalo tomorrow," Stolz said.

Aleman's mom will pick her up and bring her home on an airplane.

"I wish I could have a huge conversation with her and just ask her what she was doing," Aleman said.

But for all she's seen of the world, BooBoo still hasn't learned to speak. So those four years will stay a mystery.

"I'm just gonna hug her as much as I can and probably cry," Aleman said.