TORONTO MAN FINDS CAT, LOST FOR 13 YEARS, ON THE SAME DAY HIS OWN CAT WENT MISSING

Mary Lynn Simon was at her desk at work when she got a very unexpected phone call.

“I could barely make sense of it,” Simon told CTV News Toronto. “He said, ‘Is Jinx missing?'”

Jinx, Simon’s Abyssinian cat, had gone missing back in 2011.

“He was an indoor cat, and I had him since he was a kitten. When we moved, he was about two years old and discovered the great outdoors.”

Simon recounted that Jinx had escaped home twice before: once by getting into a stranger’s car and once when a construction worker found him wandering and returned him using the tags on his collar.

Over the past 13 years, Simon often wondered what had become of Jinx and whether he was still alive.

“It’s difficult,” she said, “it’s sad.”

Then, out of the blue last week, Simon learned not only that Jinx was alive and well but that he had traveled about 20 kilometers over the past 13 years. Simon had lived near Dufferin Street and Rogers Road when Jinx went missing, but he was found in Scarborough, near Victoria Park Avenue and Ellesmere Road.

“Did he have an owner? More than one owner?” Simon wondered. “Did he travel on foot? If only he could talk,” she said with a laugh.

Jinx may not be able to talk, but the man who found him can. Louie Gjorgijevski was driving down Victoria Park last Tuesday when something caught his eye by the side of the road.

“I thought, that’s a cat at a bus stop,'” Gjorgijevski told CTV News. “So I drove around, made a turn, and came back to check.”

Gjorgijevski noticed that the cat wasn’t wearing a collar or any tags, so he picked him up, put him in his car, and drove straight to his veterinarian’s office.

“If he has a microchip, we’ll be happy,” Gjorgijevski said. “And sure enough, he had a microchip!”

That’s when it was discovered that Jinx had an owner. When Gjorgijevski learned that Jinx had been missing for over a decade, he said, “I got goosebumps… 12 years? A cat missing? Wow!”

The discovery was bittersweet for Gjorgijevski. On the same day he found Jinx, he had also lost his own cat—a formerly feral feline he had adopted months ago after his 19-year-old cat died in March. Gjorgijevski has put up posters around his neighborhood but fears his neighbors might think his cat is a stray.

“That cat is not a stray,” he said. “That cat has an owner. I am the owner of that cat. The right thing to do is to bring that cat back.”

As for Jinx, aside from some minor health issues, he is in decent shape for an almost 16-year-old cat. Now back in his original home, it will take some time before he is introduced to the other cats that have been adopted since he left.

Simon expressed her deep gratitude to Gjorgijevski and hopes that someone will now show the same kindness to him and his cat.