B.C. cat with $5,000 bounty saunters home

The cat came backall on its own.

In the end, the $5,000 reward, hundreds of missing posters, national media coverage, online and social media campaigns, classified ads, a tracking dog request and 12 straight days of searching day and night were for naught.

Kitty the feline,who went missing from a downtown Kelowna, B.C., home on July 30, reappeared Wednesday in the same spot she disappeared from.

"I have no idea what happened to her and probably never will," said relieved owner Barb Cook.

"She's lost a ton of weight, is really dirty and smeared with grease and is traumatized. My best guess is that she ended up trapped in someone's shed or garage and bolted as soon as she could to come back."

The irony of the extraordinary measures to find the cat to have it simply return are not lost on Cook.

"I know," she said with a laugh. "People have asked me in jest if the cat wasn't here the whole time and I just didn't know it."

Story went viral

Cook's missing cat story struck a chord, not just in Kelowna, but across the country.

She ran a classified ad in the Kelowna paper offering a $5,000 reward.

The story was picked up by newspapers and websites across Canada and Cook was flooded with calls of sympathy, support and tips of where to look for lost cats.

It was Cook's three-year-old niece, Caira, who spotted Kitty back in the yard Wednesday morning.

Caira's mother, who is Cook's sister, won't allow Cook to give the child the reward money.

"I think what I'd do is use the $5,000 for a down payment as originally planned and then save and offer to pay for Caira's tuition for first-year college or university in 15 years time," Cook said.

Cook is a science teacher at North Peace High School in Fort St. John, B.C.

Her mom lives in Kelowna and she is the only one Cook trusts to watch Kitty when she travels.

So Kitty, an indoor cat, was left with mom in late July so Cook could visit her boyfriend in Texas and then continue on to San Diego for a teachers' conference.

When Kitty got outside and disappeared July 30, Cook came home immediately to start her exhaustive search.

"Some people think I am a bit fanatical about this," Cook said at the time.

"But Kitty is part of my family and this is what I would do for any member of my family who was missing."

Kitty in now getting a bath and veterinarian check and then Cook will scour town again this time to take down all the missing posters she put up and tell all the people she contacted that Kitty has come home.