The Increidble Homeward Bound Journey

Hastings, MN

January 6th, 2007

We've seen the stories fall on the silver screen or even dance across our television sets: family pet takes a trip with the family, is accidentally left behind by said family, then the music swells, maybe there's a celebrity voice maybe not, the dog or cat starts walking following its instincts "Homeward Bound" on an "Incredible Journey."

This isn't that story, or at least not exactly. This past Saturday in a small town just south of St. Paul, MN a small black cat that had been written off for gone walked up to the back door after a two and a half month long absence. "I thought I was looking at a ghost," Jennifer Eddy told us. Not believing her own eyes she looked to her father to confirm what they were looking at and sure enough it was Ziggy.

Ziggy "Bitch Kitty"Eddy wandered her way into the Eddy household nearly a decade ago after having been left by the side of the road. Picked out of the litter by the youngest Eddy child, Steven, Ziggy became a part of the ever growing list of rescued animals that found their way into the Eddy house. "The rest were just sitting there, but this little black one was terrorizing all the others. Of course I picked her," Steven told us. "There was a docile little white one that my mom wanted, but I said we already have a nice white cat, we need one that would shake things up a bit."

Then, just under three months ago in the midst of an unusually warm Minnesota autumn, Ziggy went outside one night and didn't come back. Days past giving way to weeks and eventually months, and no one thought they would see Ziggy again. Don, the only Eddy that still resides at the family house in Hastings, admitted he missed the little black cat but had also gotten comfortable with the idea of only having to look after the one remaining cat, Willie ( a tom cat who was also a stray.) We caught Mr. Eddy before he began his 2007 International XC Ski Tour and when asked what he thought about the cat that wandered back into his life he said, "you mean I have two cats again?"

Disbelief is the only thing that is over powering the happiness felt by the Eddy's for the return of their little black cat, and while only Ziggy knows where she went, why she left and why she eventually came back, it must have been an Incredible Journey.