Many of us have had a cat wander away from home and spent countless hours desperately searching for our lost feline friend. This cat probably set the Sodus Point record for travelling the greatest distance and being safely returned. A special Thanks to Fred Harrington for this circa 1920 newspaper article he found in his Grandmother’s bible!

Cat  Locked  in  Freight  Gets  200-Mile  Ride

Master Wires Ahead and Railroad Men Find Missing Pussy and Feed Her

     Sodus Point, Jan. 10  —  If cats could talk, what a yarn Pussy Thrasher could spin !

     All the way from Sodus to Ralston, Pa., Pussy Thrasher rode as a prisoner in a sealed freight car, and if her master hadn’t telegraphed every way-station in the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Elmire division, Pussy might have starved to death.

     Pussy is an exceptional cat.  She follows her master, E. B. Thrasher of Sodus Point, everywhere he goes.  When Mr. Thrasher, a dealer in hay, grain and feed, went to Sodus Point to unload a box-car of feed consigned to him over the Northern Central Branch of the Pennsylvania at Sodus, Pussy tagged along.

LOCK IN CAR

     Mr. Thrasher and his aides made short work of unloading the consignment and when they were through, a railroad man closed and bolted the car’s doors.  Mr. Thrasher didn’t miss his cat until he got home.  He went back to look for her.  There was no sign of Pussy at the unloading place, and the box car had been hauled away.

     The feed man pondered.  His cat had never deserted him like this before.  It was reasonable to suppose that she had been locked in the car and trundled away with it.  And so he went to a telegraph office and proceeded to burn the wires.

     His message was addressed to the Pennsylvania freight agent in Elmira, and embodied a request that railroad attaches look for Pussy Thrasher in Car  NKP—10359.

HUNGRY BUT SAFE

     Thrasher’s  S  O  S  in behalf of his inadvertently kidnaped cat was relayed from the Elmira division headquarters all along the line, and a car checker in Ralston, Pa., finally found car NKP-10359.  The car was opened, and there was Pussy Thrasher, huddled in a corner — bruised, emaciated, covered with dust and too weak to move.

     Railroad men carried Pussy to the trainmaster’s office, and from a lunch room obtained a bowl of warm milk, which she avidly lapped.   Soon news flashed along the wires that NKP-10359 and its feline stow-away had been found.

     When Thrasher received the good news he wired instruction that Pussy be crated up and sent to Sodus a la baggage.  And so the wandering cat rode home in state on a fast train.  She had traveled more that 200 miles.