Last year, Holly Hood and her daughters Caroline and Kate had given up on their beloved cat. They did not think they would ever see Polkadot (Dot) again.
“Last June 23, we moved into our new house, and she didn’t like it. She meowed and was unhappy and was pacing back and forth around the house. I tried to keep her in and finally decided to let her out,” Hood said.
Dot returned that evening, and Hood took that as a sign their pet had transitioned with the move.
Unfortunately, that was not the case.
“I let her out again on the morning of July 5, and she never came back.
At first, Hood thought it was just the noise from fireworks being shot that frightened the cat and figured she would return once the noise had subsided, but she did not.
“We remained hopeful for a while that she might find her way back home. We put up signs and put it on Facebook and spread the word as much as we could,” Hood said.
Calls were received with reports of a cat matching Dot’s description, she said, but it was always to no avail.
Hood said she informed the neighbors in her former neighborhood of the missing cat and even drove by her old house everyday in search of the pet.
“Everyone was on the lookout for her,” she said.
It was not until the fall of 2014, Hood said, that the family finally decided to get a new kitten.
“I have always had cats,” Hood said.
Dixie became the newest member of the family, and Hood described the little kitten as spunky.
Fast forward to a Saturday in mid June.  Hood was scrolling through Facebook and noticed a post from PetSense, a local retail pet store, which also works in conjunction with Paws Rescue to help pets find a new home.
“I saw a picture that really looked like Polkadot,” she said.
Hood called her eldest daughter downstairs to get her opinion on the similarities of the cat.
After being convinced the picture was of Dot, Hood said they jumped in the car and headed to PetSense.
She said they knew it was Dot immediately from her mannerism to how she meowed.
However, PetSense needed a little more convincing. After spending the rest of that Saturday and almost all day Sunday at the pet store doting on their cat, Dot was eventually returned to her owners on a Monday.
“I still can’t believe she is back after 11 months,” Hood said.
Dot’s adventure seems uncanny, but there is more to the story.
On a return visit to PetSense to purchase cat food, Hood said she ran into the lady that runs Paws Rescue.  Hood inquired about Polka Dot’s rescue before she had been brought to the store.
“PetSense told me she had been on Highway 80 with an elderly lady, and the family had to surrender her because they were afraid the lady would trip over the cat. So my mother said to me ‘do you think that could be Aunt Josie?’ Aunt Josie is Josephine Gilliland, my children’s great-great aunt,” Hood said.
Hood said the notion of Polkadot escaping their house and winding up living with someone related to her children just seemed too far-fetched in an already unbelievable cat tale.
Hood’s mother made a call to Aunt Josie’s daughter, Rosalie Theobald, and it was confirmed the cat was one and the same.
“Polkadot wandered up to their house in January 2015, where she was between July 2014 to January.  Who knows?” Hood said.
If you thought that was the end of Polkadot’s story, like the many lives of cats, there is still one more escapade for the feline.
While Dot was living at Aunt Josie’s home, she pulled a fast one on Theobald.
On one occasion while transporting furniture to her children, Theobald had stopped in Bovina to check the load.
When she opened the door of the trailer, out jumped Dot.
“They tried to catch her because they did not want to leave her,” Hood said, but they could not find her and ultimately had to get on their way.
Ironically, when Theobald returned home, Dot had already found her way back to Aunt Josie’s house.
In an attempt to keep the eight-year-old cat from trekking out on any more adventures, Hood said Dot is now relegated to living indoors.
Sounds like the purrfect solution.