Cat makes 6-mile trek back to NH home

BEDFORD, N.H. (AP) — Animal rescue league officials say they don't know how a black cat walked about 6 miles in three days to find his way back home in New Hampshire.

Wollie the cat has been reunited with Barbara Oliphant.

She began caring for the stray last summer. But when her husband was hospitalized with a stroke, she said she couldn't give Wollie much attention and turned him over to the Animal Rescue League of New Hampshire in Bedford in early June.

Her husband began getting better, and Oliphant missed Wollie — a name that came from her husband's nickname, "Oli" — terribly. Her daughter secretly adopted the 3-year-old cat on June 23 with the intention of surprising her mother with the return of her much-missed pet, but Wollie poked a paw through his zippered carrier in the parking lot and escaped.

Three days later, Oliphant said she spotted Wollie crossing a road leading to the house.

"I just felt it was a miracle," she said. "I felt the cat wanted us."

He ate three cans of cat food and slept for about 24 hours.

"Only he knows the story, where he went, what he was doing," Laura Montenegro of the rescue league said. "I just still can't get over it."

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Information from: WMUR-TV, http://wmur.com