Cats are indeed creatures of mystery, so we’ll never know exactly how Izzy got from her home all the way in North Carolina to a parking lot of an Ulster Savings Bank branch in Kingston, or what adventures she had in her two years on the run. But she picked the right parking lot, as concerned workers took her in to the Ulster County SPCA for a checkup. Once there, staff found she had a microchip, which had enough information to connect them with Izzy’s family, who figured they’d never see her again.
According to a press release from the UCSPCA, bank employees fed her and even, appropriately enough, named her Penny. One of the employees, the release stated, decided to bring her to the UCSPCA medical clinic to make sure she was up to date on her shots and to get her spayed.
Medical Coordinator Brad Schoonmaker quickly realized the cat had already been spayed. “Our next step was to check for a microchip and see if this cat had a family,” he’s quoted as saying in the release. “Sure enough, we found the owner’s name and address and we knew we were on to something.”
While the registered address was out of date, Schoonmaker used Facebook to find the owners. Penny turned out to be Izzy, the missing cat of a military family that had previously lived in North Carolina. In another stroke of luck, the family happened to be vacationing on Long Island and a reunion was made, the release stated.
Izzy’s owner, who has requested to remain anonymous, was, according to the UCSPCA, elated to be reunited with her cat that went missing two years prior and 700 miles away.
Currently, Izzy is home and happy, reported to be lounging on a cat tree and enjoying her favorite flavor of Fancy Feast.
The Ulster County SPCA is a proponent of “Trap-Neuter-Release,” a program designed to help reduce the homeless pet population by returning healthy, altered cats to their original environment. Hundreds of cats pass through their doors as a part of this program every year and just one step in the process is scanning for a microchip in the hope of reuniting lost cats to their owners.
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