An Ontario family will soon be reunited with their beloved cat after nearly three weeks, thanks to the help of a Manitoba woman and her local community. It all started earlier in the month when a family from Ontario was camping in Virden, Man., and their cat Goldie ran away at the very end of the trip. The family was unable to stay in Manitoba any longer, so they returned to Ontario without their beloved pet. The Town of Virden Animal Control and Westman Area Lost Animals then got involved and used traps and trail cameras to successfully track Goldie down. Since then, Goldie has been in the care of a woman found through the Virden Pet Network. However, the issue remained of how to get Goldie back to his family in Hamilton, Ont. “The Virden Pet Network had put a big post out on one of their sites, [asking] if there was anybody that could possibly transfer a cat with them to Toronto by air to get back to their family,” explained Virden resident Sharon Ellerington. Ellerington said she volunteered for the job, as she already had plans to fly to Hamilton on July 30 to visit family. She said she’s going to pick up Goldie on Thursday morning, bring him on the plane with her and reunite him with his family at the airport in Ontario. “It’s pretty exciting to be able to think that you can reunite an animal with their family over 2,000 kilometres away,” she said. Ellerington said she’s been in touch with the family, noting that they are very excited to have Goldie back home. She added the whole community came together to help this family and she’s happy to be a part of it. “To be able to do this, it really took a lot of people to make it all happen and it worked out so well for me to be able to be right in the same town as Goldie was and get him back to the actual city that the family’s from.”
