B.C woman inspired by ‘Toy Story’ to reconnect lost plushie with 3-year-old boy

“I knew it was a little kid’s love stuffie.” Adam finds out how a woman was inspired by a classic cartoon to reconnect a boy with his lost toy.

Alyssa Hamlet was walking home when she saw the plushie lying alone on the sidewalk.

“People were stepping over him,” Alyssa points to the spot where she found the orange cat. “Arms stretched out, belly up, he looked so done with life.”

So, Alyssa picked the stuffed animal up.

“It wasn’t dirty,” Alyssa says. “It just looked really well loved.”

And she suspected that whoever loved it so well would be missing it too much.

So, Alyssa placed him at eye level on a bus stop pole, and waited a while, before committing to do all she could to reconnect the plushie with his person.

“I was like, ‘I’m going to take responsibility of him,’” Alyssa explains.

Alyssa took him home, and posted lost plushie posters online, after giving the cat a bubble bath in her sink.

“[The Pixar movie] Toy Story totally brainwashed me,” Alyssa laughs. “Because I see a toy and I think it has feelings.”

Animated movies like that also inspired Alyssa to grow-up to bringing inanimate objects to life as an animation artist, so every day she posted new pictures of the plushie on-line to attract attention to her plight — from posing the feline looking forlorn, to being comforted by her real cat.

About a week later, she received a message from a mom.

“She’s like ‘Oh my God!,’” Alyssa says. “‘That’s my three-year-old’s!’”

The mom said the cat had likely fallen out of her son’s stroller, the boy had struggled to sleep without it for days, and although she’d tried to replace it with a new one, it couldn’t compare to her son’s one and only Meow-Meow.

“He‘s had that cat since he was six months old!” Alyssa says. “I knew it was a little kids love stuffie!’”

They arranged to meet right away.

After tying a bow around Meow-Meow’s neck, Alyssa travelled with it across town, capturing the transit journey from the stuffie’s perspective on camera, before waiting at a coffee shop, to reunite a boy with his best friend.

“Oh my gosh! Hi Buddy!,’” Alyssa exclaims in the video she shot of her returning the plushie. “There’s your cat!”

“He grabbed it,” Alyssa smiles. “He was hugging it, and he showed his mom!”

Although his mom said she couldn’t be more thankful, and the boy offered her his cookie, Alyssa could see from the beaming smile on his face that all her effort was worth it.

“I feel like a lot of people say it’s not my business, or not my monkey, not my circus,” Alyssa says. “But you can make it your business.”

You don’t need to be an animator to transform tears into grateful smiles.