We had a really nice, clean, medium big dog show up at our house many years ago. I don't remember how it showed up but it must have ended up at our kitchen door or backyard looking in need of food and water, so we fed it and gave him water. He adopted us right away, hanging out on our patio resting and letting us pet him. There was no identifying collar or anything and we thought we had a new pet!
He vegged out the rest of the day on our patio resting, eating and getting love. That night we opened the door and he came right inside with us, so we led him down to the basement for the night to sleep and gave him a bed to lay on.
The next day we got up, opened the cellar door and there he was looking up the stairs at us! All happy and loving. He came right up and we fed him some more and let him go back outside. Sometime later we went out to check on him and he was gone! Never saw him again.
Best we could figure is that he was lost or separated from his family and was traveling to find them again. I don't know how these animals do it but it wouldn't surprise me if he eventually found his real home!
My guess is that this cat was born a stray and prefers it that way, realizing that she can find food at will, plus the occasional help from a human, maybe got picked up like the article suggests and taken to Idaho, where, when she got the chance, split for the wild again. Cats really are good at taking care of themselves. We've had 1-2 feral cats living on our patio the past few winters where they found and made a warm bed to sleep on in really cold nights to get up off the cold ground.
Now that this cat is 13 and found again, hopefully she will want to stay put and take life easy, not that the owner is likely to take a chance in letting her out again!
