It Took a Ginger Cat 3 Weeks To Return to His Former Home Across Town

The moral of this tale is to bear in mind the wishes of your domestic cat companion if and when you decide to move home if, of course, you have a choice about moving.

If you wish to move home out of a preference then your cat will disagree with you judging by the stories that we read on the Internet and this one is a particularly good example. The story concerns a 2-year-old orange tabby cat and he was very used to his home in the St Johns' area of Portland, Oregon, USA.

The family moved across the town to East Portland. This was 12 miles away from their previous home.

Their tabby cat, whose name by the way is George, pretty well immediately set off to return to the place he knew. The only difficulty was that it was, as I say, 12 miles away and and it is known that there are coyotes in the area plus there were 3 interstate highways and I am sure many other roads in between where he was and where he wanted to be.

George made it but it took him 3 weeks and he lost a bit of weight on the way.  When it got there he appears to have been met by the people who rented the property perhaps from George's owners, the Champion family.  I presume they contacted their landlord, the Champions who collected him.

I think he's very impressive. He is now under house arrest and he won't be let out of the home unless he is on a leash. 

It just tells us how very connected the domestic cat is to his territory.  I think the connection between the domestic cat and the place he lives is stronger than the connection between people in the place they live.  A cat's territory is part of him.  It is a part of what he is. In the wild, cats patrol it incessantly and defend it from intruders and we know that unneutered domestic cats do exactly the same thing.

George preferred to live in his territory rather than with his human caretakers. I think that is significant.

There is a black-and-white unaltered (whole in that he has his reproductive organs) cat who patrols his territory and my home is within his territory so whenever he meets my cat who comes out with me into the garden we have the makings of an intense fight unless I intervene.  We are intruders on his patch.