Feb. 3 (UPI) —<\/span> A cat who went missing from her owner’s Maine home seven years ago will be reunited soon with her family after turning up more than 1,400 miles away in Florida.<\/p>\n Denise Cilley, of Chesterville, said her family’s pet, Ashes, was strictly an indoor cat when the feline escaped from the house in August 2015.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n Cilley said her family searched for the then-1-year-old cat, but there was no sign of Ashes. She said the family eventually came to believe she had been taken by a fox or other predator.<\/p>\n Cilley said she was initially confused when she recently received a phone call from a veterinarian in Longwood, Fla.<\/p>\n “I live in Maine. We don’t have a cat in Florida,” Cilley recalled telling the vet, according to an interview with Patch.<\/p>\n The veterinarian told Cilley the feline had a microchip from the Franklin County Animal Shelter that contained her contact information, and after receiving a description of the animal, she realized the cat must be the long-lost Ashes.<\/p>\n A mutual friend helped Cilley connect with Janet Williams, a former Maine resident who moved to Florida and founded the Pixel Fund and Adore Pet Rescue groups.\n<\/p>\n “They called me because I do have connections in the rescue community,” Williams said. “And there’s a fairly well-organized rescue network up and down the East Coast I could tap into.”<\/p>\n The veterinarian determined Ashes had health issues including an upper respiratory infection, dental disease, some missing teeth and a scabby coat.<\/p>\n A GoFundMe page was started to raise funds for Ashes’ veterinary care and travel costs.<\/p>\n Williams, who is fostering Ashes until the feline can return home, and Cilley have arranged for a Southwest Airlines employee to fly the cat home once she is cleared by the veterinarian.<\/p>\n Cilley said she has no clues as to how Ashes ended up so far from home.<\/p>\n “We have no idea,” Cilley said. “Maybe somebody found her in Maine, thought she was a stray, took her in and moved to Florida, and she got out and couldn’t find her way home.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A cat that went missing from\u00a0Denise Cilley’s Chesterville, Maine, home in 2015 turned up seven years later when she was brought to a veterinarian in Longwood, Fla. Photo by\u00a0guapita50\/Pixabay.com Feb. 3 (UPI) — A cat who went missing from her owner’s Maine home seven years ago will be reunited soon with her family after turning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":975391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-975390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-odd-but-true"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n ![\"Missing](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Missing-Maine-cat-turns-up-in-Florida-7-years-later.jpg\" "\\"Missing")
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\n<\/div>\nA cat that went missing from\u00a0Denise Cilley’s Chesterville, Maine, home in 2015 turned up seven years later when she was brought to a veterinarian in Longwood, Fla. Photo by\u00a0guapita50\/Pixabay.com<\/div>\n\n