SALMON,
Idaho — After four months of searching, days
of driving and a case of mistaken feline identity, a California man
has been reunited with the pet cat he lost in Idaho last year.
Bill Uhlig said he was headed to his northern California
hometown from Glacier National Park in Montana last September when
he stopped in Idaho and lost Cinderella, the cat that had been his
constant traveling companion.
"I never expected to find her but I did," he said Saturday from
Covelo, Calif. "She's lost a lot of weight in four months but she's
putting it back on; I'm feeding her good."
Uhlig, a retired heavy equipment mechanic, said he now believes
he has good cat karma even though sightings of Cinderella were slim
after it jumped out of Uhlig's motor home at a gas station in
American Falls in southeastern Idaho.
Uhlig was unaware of the cat's escape until he pulled into a
rest area about 10 minutes later.
An hours-long search of the gas station and surrounding
structures failed to locate the gray cat with ears that bent down
instead of erect. Ailing from flu, the 78-year-old Uhlig decided to
drive home.
"I felt sick - and it wasn't only the flu," he said.
After two months and a blitz of online bulletins about the
missing cat, an animal shelter worker from Idaho telephoned to
report a cat fitting the description was holed up in a barn 15
miles north of American Falls.
Uhlig, whose wife of 58 years died in July, drove to Aberdeen,
Idaho, to collect the cat, which was anything but welcoming.
"She was hissing and wanting to fight," Uhlig said. "I thought
she was really mad because I left her. I finally got her cornered
and into a cage and figured she would get calmed down when I got
her home."
Instead, the cat disappeared under Uhlig's bed. He decided to
let it outside - and hasn't seen it since. He now knows it was a
Cinderella look-alike.
"It was the exact same cat," he said
Earlier this month, the mix-up was confirmed when Uhlig got
another call about a stray gray cat near American Falls.
This time it was no fairy tale.
"It was really Cinderella," said Uhlig, who recently returned
from Idaho with the cat he raised from the time it was just weeks
old.
"When I showed up to get her, she jumped right in my lap and
started purring," he said.
A leg Cinderella broke during the months on the run is now
healing and Uhlig said it's a happy ending except for the imposter
cat that cut and run.
"You know, though, they have nine lives," he said.