An orange tabby cat named Kevin went missing two years ago after his owner let him go outside for the first time.
Cheryl Walls of Anderson, S.C. adopted the cat in 2013 and kept him as an indoor cat, but "he acted unhappy," she later told Kevin's rescuers, according to NBC News.
Walls wanted to let Kevin experience the outdoors, but in one day, he vanished.
"I assumed someone must have picked him up," she said.
Months passed, and the beloved feline didn't return home.
A woman who was driving a U-Haul across the California/Arizona border got stopped by a food and agriculture inspector last month, and he heard faint meows coming from inside the trailer.
The driver insisted that the cat wasn't hers, and that she didn't know where it came from. The dehydrated and malnourished cat was taken to a Riverside County Animal Services shelter in Blythe, Calif. on March 4, and workers tried to restore him to health, NBC News reported.
Employees at the shelter discovered that Kevin had been microchipped, and his information led them to Cheryl Walls.
It remains a mystery how Kevin trekked so far and wound up in California. Perhaps he got lost on his way back home, and was determined to reunite with his owner.
Riverside County officials put Kevin on an airplane headed toward South Carolina yesterday, and Walls should have Kevin in her arms at any moment.
"We have handled some pets with crazy back stories, and this is one more for the list," Riverside County Animal Services director Robert Miller said. "The good news is we know the owner, she wants her pet back, and we'll make that happen."
