PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. - The last time cat-owner Kelly Levy saw her tiger-striped feline was before she took her husband to the airport. The 24-year-old came back to her house late Friday to find the bottom step, where Gracie Mae would usually be waiting, empty.
Levy tore the house apart looking for the 10-month-old tabby who had been spayed just days before. She and her dad took out bathroom tiles and part of a cabinet to check a crawl space and papered the neighborhood with "lost cat" signs.
Then she got a phone call.
"Hi, you're not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas, and I accidentally picked up your husband's luggage. And when I opened the luggage, a cat jumped out," Levy recalled the caller saying, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.
Rob Carter, of Fort Worth, told The Dallas Morning News for its online edition Tuesday that he made it home with the suitcase.
"I went to unpack and saw some of the clothes and saw it wasn't my suitcase," Carter said. "I was going to close it, and a kitten jumped out and ran under the bed. I screamed like a little girl."
Carter said that he eventually was able to get the cat to come out from under the bed.
"In the morning, I got close enough to see its collar and the phone number on it," he said. "So I called the number and got a hold of the crying wife of the traveler."
Gracie Mae had crawled into Seth Levy's black suitcase undetected, been put through an X-ray machine, loaded onto an airplane, thrown onto a baggage claim conveyor belt and picked up by a stranger.
Carter delivered Gracie Mae to Seth Levy and the tabby made the 1,300-mile trip home on an $80 plane ticket Sunday night.
Carter said that he considered keeping the cat before he knew she had a home.
"If I couldn't have found a good home, I would have kept it," he said. "We were going to name it Suitcase."
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Missing Cat found in man's suitecase
Friday, January 18, 2008
Seized Pet Dogs back with owner


This story has a happy ending.
Hooch is back with his owner
Two dogs saved from a destruction order by a magistrate earlier this week have been returned to their owner in east Belfast.
Mongrels Roxy and Hooch spent the last year in a dog pound, because it was thought they were pit bulls.
The animals were seized by Belfast City Council last January after a report that their owner, 64-year-old Irene Chambers, kept dangerous dogs.
However, on Wednesday a magistrate accepted the dogs were mongrels.
Dismissing the charges he said the dogs were owned by a "loving and caring lady".
Roxy has also been returned
Mrs Chambers cried when the ruling was made.
The dogs are now back home in Knock Way but have to be kept apart until they get used to each other again. source: K9 news





