She Went Out Through the Cat Flap. Five Months Later She Turned Up Fifteen Miles Away, in a Furniture Shop.

Cooper is three, black and white, and belongs to Laura Moyns in Gargrave, a village near Skipton in North Yorkshire. In the spring she went out through the cat flap, the way she had a thousand times, and did not come back.

On the eighteenth of August she was in a furniture shop in Keighley. That is fifteen miles away, over the hills, and there is no version of the story anybody can tell you. "We're not entirely sure how she's got there," Moyns said, "unless she's got in a van or something, I've no idea."

Cookie · Editor-in-chief

Fifteen miles, five months, and she comes back looking innocent. I have never respected anyone more.

Nora · Adoption desk

She was probably asleep in a van for most of it.

Cookie · Editor-in-chief

That is the respectful way to travel fifteen miles.

A shop worker, Andrea Green, looked after her until someone could scan her. "My heart melted seeing the owners reunited," she said afterwards. "I am like a cat magnet."

The scan is the whole story, really. Five months and fifteen miles collapse into one afternoon the moment a chip gives up a phone number, and the only thing that stops it working is a number nobody updated after moving house. Check yours is current, and then go back to assuming your cat will be home for dinner.