IT’S well-known that cats will travel - sometimes kilometres - to find their way home. But one Freemans Reach cat has been on a mission since before Christmas to find its way back to its former residence in Wilberforce, a multi-kilometre trip across main roads and paddocks.
The four-year-old tabby is the fur child of Sandra Tremier, owner of Tic Toc Equestrian - a riding school and horse training facility.
When the business moved premises late last year, the cat in question, named Rock, simply wouldn’t stay put.
Rock and his brother Star (named for being ‘rockstars’, according to Ms Tremier) came to live at Tic Toc Equestrian when they were very young, so it’s not surprising that Rock still feels an affinity with his old stomping ground.
If you were driving from the old house to the new one, it would be a 7.8-kilometre trip (according to Google Maps), and Rock has now taken this trek four times (though he probably knows a short cut!).
“When you move house with cats you have to lock them in for a bit so they can get used to the new place, so we locked them inside the barn but they quickly found a way out,” Ms Tremier said.
“Within a week or two, Rock was gone back to the old place.
“We used to rent the other place and the owners who are there now called me one morning and said ‘guess who is here?!’
“There are a few roads you have to cross and you wonder how he found his way back - it’s like they have a GPS inside their body.”
Ms Tremier said the first time he turned up at the old house she had actually driven there that day and thought he might have simply jumped in her car and hidden, but the second time, when she had locked him in the shed at midnight and she got the call at 6am the following morning, she knew what he was up to.
Luckily, the owners of his old ‘pad’ know him and he’s been in safe hands on the occasions he’s made the solo voyage back.
“The other people said they’re very happy to keep him there, actually! But he’s my baby, and I hope he settles in here soon,” Ms Tremier said.
Despite his disappearing acts, Rock has seemed very happy at the new stables, spending his days with his brother Star and the horses, and driving around in the quad bike with Ms Tremier.
“He’s got a funny personality, very playful and outgoing,” she said.
Meanwhile, Ms Tremier has found a new place to put her kitties away at night, and is hoping that will stop Rock’s wandering.
“It hasn’t been a winning battle so far, so the best way at the moment is to continue locking him in at night so there’s no way he can get out and go back,” she said.