Lost cat returns to Kennett family

KENNETT, Mo. -- Whitney Lowry loves animals, and in the fall of 2000, she attended a friend's birthday party where the party favor was a kitten for the guests.

"We played with kittens all night and I had to have one," Whitney said.

She talked her father, Jim Lowry, into letting her take one of the kittens home, and Tiger entered the family's household.

Little did the family know that less than a year later, Tiger would take tremendous strides to stay a part of the family.

As a part of her fascination with animals, Whitney rides horses and is a member of the Butler County 4-H Club. She participates in the group's rides and rodeos.

Last August, the family loaded its motorhome for a week stay at a campground in Eminence, Mo., while they took part in a weeklong trail ride. Before arriving in Eminence, the family also stopped in Ellisnore, Mo., for a day to allow Whitney to participate in a 4-H rodeo.

Kitten disappears

When the family returned home, Tiger had disappeared.

"I cried almost every day," Whitney said. "He slept with me and always played with me. He was just a playful cat."

Two weeks prior to his disappearance, the family had taken Tiger to Dr. Everett Mobley to have the cat neutered. While at the vet's, Mobley inserted a tiny computer chip between Tiger's shoulder blades. With the chip, the clinic can "scan" an animal to see if it is truly the animal the owner believes it to be.

"Tiger had been sick since the neutering and when he did not show up at our doorstep we figured he had gone off to die," Whitney's mother, Kim Lowry, said of the cat's disappearance.

The family ran ads in the newspaper describing the missing cat and looked for him around the neighborhood.

Kim Lowry said a woman in town had called several times about seeing a cat meeting Tiger's description after reading it in the paper.

"She said she saw the cat every morning," Kim Lowry said. "I would drive through her neighborhood before school but could never locate Tiger. I just kept waiting for him to show up at the door."

One morning, more than five months after he disappeared, Tiger did show up at the door. Whitney's younger sister, Tatum, was the first to find him.

"She yelled 'Momma, Tigerbell's back!,'" Kim Lowry said.

The family took the cat to Mobley's office to have his staff scan the computer chip to see if the cat was, in fact, Tiger.

"Mom didn't believe it was Tiger at first, but I could tell it was him just by looking at his eyes and the way he loved up to us," Whitney said. "It was so cool."

Although they have no way of knowing for sure, the family thinks Tiger has traveled a long way to return home.

"When a pet disappears, you never know if someone has taken it in as their own," Kim Lowry said, "but with Tiger, he was just so matted and dirty, I don't think he lived inside somewhere."

The Lowry's think Tiger, who likes to play on the roof of their home, jumped onto the top of the motorhome while they were loading it for the trip to Eminence. During their stop in Ellisnore, he stepped down from his perch atop of the motorhome and did not make it back to the motorhome before they made their way to Eminence.

"He's kind of like a stowaway. He had a free ride but then missed the trip back home," Kim Lowry said.