An incredible journey

It was a sunny Sunday morning in late autumn when Samantha Nightcrawler first strolled into the Leahy’s back yard.

The Motueka family went to investigate the meowing in their garden, only to find a smoochy, mercurial black kitten demanding their attention.

The family assumed that the cat had popped over for a visit from a nearby house, and so the children, five-year-old Reid and two-year-old Shannon, treated him to a saucer of milk and spent the day getting acquainted.

‘‘We played with him and loved him and thought that at night, he’d go back to the neighbours,’’ their mother Jamie explained.

However, as the day drew to an end, Samantha Nightcrawler (as the children had dubbed her) showed no sign of heading for home, and so the Leahys went door-knocking to find his owner, to no avail.

The next morning, the cat returned, and so they put a post on the Motueka community Facebook group to track down her family.

After no positive leads for three days they took him to the vet to see if he was microchipped.

Sure enough, a location blinked up on the screen – but not within Motueka, or even the Tasman district.

It turns out that Samantha Nightcrawler was actually six-month-old Benji, who usually resided with his owner Miyuki Duggan, in Stoke.

She was ‘‘just rapt’’ to receive the phone call from the vet, saying that as soon as she heard who was calling, she knew that Benji had been found.

Although the Leahy family were ‘‘a bit gutted’’ that they couldn’t keep him, Jamie was pleased to hear his original owners had been so relieved to get him back, saying that if the roles had been reversed, she would have been thrilled to have her pet back too.

‘‘It was a happy ending.’’