The Long Walk Home

Pets tend to get attached to their human owners, there are theories that canines get more attached to their owner as a person as they are the ones giving out the food, whereas felines tend to get more attached to the place where their owners live as the cat also views it as shelter. The yarn spinning of pet theories and all the rest could go for miles, but a relatively recent case from a few years back shows exactly how much cats become attached to their surroundings and that they do indeed view their owners’ home as the ultimate home and shelter.

This is the story of Jessie, the Australian cat which apparently walked more than two thousand miles in order to get back home, only to find out that no one was living there any longer.

So here is what happened – in two thousand eleven, a family based in South Australia were moving to the Northern Territory. Their pet cat Jessie was also supposed to relocate with them, as one would expect and imagine. The home removal went fine, and the family were settling in at their new residence in Australia’s NT. Their cat Jessie though, didn’t seem too bothered by the house removal, but not long after it went missing. Apparently, Jessie the brave cat, walked two thousand miles from the family’s new home in the Northern Territory to their old place in South Australia, and it took more than a year to get there!

Jessie seemed to have been settling in well her owners says, but after a week or so at the new house in the Northern Territory the cat simply vanished. The owner believes that the courageous tabby (Jessie’s breed is called a tabby) took a hike and left Berry Springs – their new hometown just outside of Darwin, NT then walked all the way to their old place in Ungarra on the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. As per its owners, Jessie is a cat which doesn’t like getting into and travelling by car, so the thing must have walked all the way back to SA.

About a year or so later, the new house owners in South Australia, saw a strange cat hanging out the front and back yard. The new owners took a photo of the cat (it is not known whether or not the new owners even knew if a cat actually lived at the house prior to purchase) and sent it to the previous owners, now living in the Northern Territory. When shown the photos, Jessie’s owner was positive this was here very own cat, how the thing managed to get back to SA after more than twelve months still remains a mystery.

Jessie, which for the time being is taken care of by the new home owners in South Australia, must have endured Australia’s unbelievably harsh interior climate in order to have reached its origin state, or it could have taken the coastal route, which would have taken even longer than twelve months to cover. Jessie, the brave tabby that walked across Australia to get home, shows perhaps one of the less known complications of moving places with pets.