The last time Jacob and Bonnie Richter saw their 4-year-old tortoiseshell cat Holly, she bolted out of their motor home at the Daytona International Speedway on Nov. 4, apparently frightened by fireworks. For days, the distraught couple searched for Holly, putting up flyers and alerting rescue agencies before despondently heading home to West Palm Beach in Florida.
There was a brief glimmer of hope two weeks later when a rescue group spotted the distinctive cat outside of a Daytona Beach restaurant which fed feral cats. But before the Richters could drive there, Holly had disappeared. Then she showed up, skin and bones, paws rubbed raw and too exhausted to meow, in Barb Mazzola's Palm Beach Gardens yard.
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"She was pitiful. She just stood there, ready to collapse," said Mazzola, who rushed to the store for cat food and began feeding the cat she named Cosette. In a week, Holly was well enough to walk inside. Mazzola coaxed her into a cat carrier and took her to the vet, where she was scanned for a microchip.
The chip came back to match the Richters, who got a call from the pet tracing agency on Saturday. The couple couldn't believe it. Holly had travelled about 190 miles in 62 days. Since Holly was an inside cat, they had no idea how she found her way, ending up less than a mile from home. "It was quite a journey for this little girl," said Jacob Richter. "We just can't believe she came home."
With additional news video.
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