Glen Cove cat returns home after five-month journey across the city

Pebbles the cat went missing in mid-March after escaping during a visit at the Green Forest Veterinary Hospital of Glen Cove. “She didn’t eat or drink water for three days so I took her to the vet right here,” Kathy Sellars, of Glen Cove, said. “She ran out of the box and then she ran out of the driveway. I screamed and cried. I thought I wouldn’t see her no more.”

But with the help of fellow residents who posted sightings of the cat on social media and Cove Animal Rescue Board Director Janine Fakiris, Pebbles returned safely to her home on Aug.10.

While Pebbles was gone, Sellars said she missed her every day. “She’s only five,” Sellars said. “I’m going to cry everyday thinking that she’s starving. I was crying to the Lord, ‘Please don’t let her starve. Wrap the angels around her.’ It was heartbreaking.”

In the first months that Pebbles was missing, every now and then a resident would post a photo of her on Facebook to ask if she belonged to anyone. Fakiris, who told Sellars that she would find and return the cat back to her, would set up traps to try to bring her home.

But when there were no sightings of Pebbles for quite some time, Sellars began to fear that she wouldn’t see her cat again. “I just keep telling them, ‘Don’t give up hope. We will get a sighting. It may take time’ and I just kept communicating with her to keep her hopeful and then eventually we did,” Fakiris said. “We were able to get that cat home.”

In August, Fakiris saw a post online of Pebbles in Red Spring Colony in Glen Cove, which is on the water. “And the cat actually traveled two and a half miles from the opposite side of Glen Cove and she was living by the water at the beach,” Fakiris said. “We went down there and the funny thing is that this cat was rescued from a beach as a baby, so it did go back to a beach I guess thinking that it was an area that it was familiar with and the next morning I set up a trap on the woman’s property and we were able to bring the cat home to the two people who are ecstatic to have their cat home.”

“When she got home she ate a lot and she slept a lot,” Sellars said. “She went out today in my yard because she was used to going out. It’s a beautiful story. It’s a miracle.”