Cat comes back: Romeo’s adventure
For 18 months, Nikki Guthardt’s thought her cat was probably dead. She’d even mourned over what she thought was his body. But then, the cat came back. Romeo was last seen running out Guthardt’s front door not long after her family shifted to Upper Hutt in June last year.
Month after month, Guthardt posted online about Romeo, asking people to keep an eye out for him on community pages and lost pet registers.
A couple of months into the family’s search, they got a tip about a cat that matched Romeo’s description having been hit and killed by a car.
They were so sure it was him they took the body home but, upon having the cat’s microchip scanned, discovered they had the wrong pet. ‘‘We were crying and sitting with this dead cat that wasn’t even ours.’’
Tip-offs had led to nothing until Boxing Day evening when Guthardt saw amessage on social media about a black and white tomcat, about two minutes walk from her home in Trentham.
‘‘It was getting to the point where I was thinking, ‘It’ll probably just be another cat.’’’
After calling out his name, he ‘‘flew over a fence’’ and came straight over to her. ‘‘I scooped him up, and he snuggled into my face. I was a blubbering mess.’’
Guthardt said she couldn’t tell if Romeo had been living with another family or had been roughing it. Apart from having lost weight and developing knotty fur, he was in very good shape.
Her message to other owners of missing pets was to never lose hope.
Romeo was now getting reacquainted with her kids, some of whom were too young to remember him, and getting to know the family’s new cats.
‘‘I’m now a certified cat lady.’’