Pet cat gets lost at Nevada truck stop — and somehow ends up 600 miles away in Wyoming
Tyler the pet cat disappeared at a truck stop in Nevada — then turned up five days later in Wyoming.
No one knows exactly how he was able to travel more than 670 miles northeast, according to those who helped identify the cat as a lost pet.
“We don’t know how he got from one place to the other,” Lydia Gomez told McClatchy News. She’s the supervisor at Rock Springs Animal Shelter in Wyoming.
Someone found the friendly cat wandering around a truck stop in town and brought him in to scan for a microchip. Luckily, the cat had one, and shelter staff were able to reach his owners and notify them they’d found their cat, Gomez said.
“When she called to tell us he was in Rock Springs, I was like, ‘Wait, what? Where’s that?’” owner Brandi McIntyre told Cowboy State Daily. “I couldn’t believe it when she said ‘Wyoming.’”
They told Gomez they had lost Tyler during a stop in Nevada and had been focusing their search efforts there — all the way from their home in Decatur, Illinois. Brandi’s husband Chad McIntyre takes Tyler on long trips with him so they can keep each other company when he works as a truck driver.
The next challenge would be getting Tyler the rest of the more than 1,000 miles home. Flying was going to be too expensive, so Gomez called up Joan Nickum, an associate of hers who runs a volunteer organization dedicated to transporting pets and shelter animals cross country.
The organization breaks the journey up into segments, known as relay legs, usually among 15 or more volunteers, Cowboy State Daily reported.
Tyler left Thursday, Dec. 28, and reunited with his owners in Illinois on Sunday, Dec. 31, Gomez said.
She credits the happy ending to the cat’s microchip, and stresses the importance of registering pets’ microchips.
“We’re very pleased with the outcome,” she said.
This story was originally published January 2, 2024 at 1:54 PM with the headline "Pet cat gets lost at Nevada truck stop — and somehow ends up 600 miles away in Wyoming."
