One year ago, staffers at the San Francisco SPCA were scrambling to locate Jack Daniels, a vision-impaired kitten who'd been stolen from their adoption facility. They'd posted flyers, talked to witnesses and even alerted the media about the missing 3-month-old, but didn't have any leads.
"After a month we thought, 'That's it, we're not going to find him,' " SFSPCA president Jennifer Scarlett tells PEOPLEPets.com.
Eleven months later, their luck changed. In early August, Jack was found 2,500 miles away, roaming the streets of New York City's Harlem neighborhood. Thanks to a microchip, Manhattan city shelter workers were able to connect the dots and contact the San Francisco SPCA about their missing pal.
But there was still the issue of getting Jack home.
"Animal shelters are already low on resources, not to mention understaffed," Scarlett says. "So we started calling around to our connections in Manhattan and Brooklyn because his holding time in New York was running short." Luckily, a friend named LeeAnn Falciani stepped up to the plate, picking up Jack before his euthanization date and housing him until the SPCA could coordinate his travel back to the west coast. "We weren't sure how we were going to get him back," Scarlett says.
Thankfully, JetBlue offered the pair a free flight, and Kimpton gave Falciani a free night's stay in one of their San Francisco hotels. "It took so many pieces, and so many acts of kindness," Scarlett says. "But we finally got him home."
On Aug. 10, Jack was greeted by SPCA staffers at the San Francisco airport and whisked away to his new cat condo in their offices. "He was in great shape," Scarlett says. "It was obvious he was cared for, and kept as an indoor cat. His paws and hair were soft." But since his vision is permanently impaired – the result of a viral infection he had as a kitten – Scarlett says he wouldn't have made it on his own for very long.
Now families are lining up to adopt the friendly black cat, who is "bummed at how cold it is here in San Francisco compared to New York," but still doing well, Scarlett says. "He's just over a year old, so he still wants to play. And he will, once we find him a loving home. We just want him to have a nice, long life with a wonderful family."
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