WASHTENAW COUNTY, MI — The last time the Ambler family saw their cat Kumiko before she disappeared for months she was walking by the pool with a rabbit in her mouth.
Kumiko, a young black cat belonging to the Londonderry, New Hampshire family, must have had quite a journey. She was found about 800 miles away in Ann Arbor around Thanksgiving time.
“We were baffled,” Paul Ambler said.
The cat was gone about eight months, and “theoretically, she could have wandered” all the way to Michigan or been taken in by someone who goes to college in Ann Arbor or something like that, Ambler said.
The circumstances surrounding Kumiko’s cross-country trip remain a mystery. All the family knows is that someone brought her as a stray to the Humane Society of Huron Valley in Superior Township near Ann Arbor. The cat is microchipped.
“We never imagined how far she’d traveled from home,” Huron Valley Humane Society officials said in a social media post. The shelter had nicknamed her “Crouching Tiger.”
“We wish Crouching Tiger could tell us the story behind her baffling journey, but the happy ending is what matters. Her family wasted no time and caught a plane to Michigan, to bring their baby home,” they said in the post.
The journey changed Kumiko in a few ways. She used to love going outdoors, but now she stays indoors and loves snuggles. She used to enjoy “torturing the dog,” but now she is scared of dogs, Ambler said.
Her meow also dropped “lower” than before, “like a smoker,” which Ambler said he discovered on the way back to the Detroit Airport after picking her up from the shelter.
“When she was out on the road, smoking her three packs a day, she might have run into some dogs who were big and angry,” he said, joking, “I’ve asked her, but she won’t tell me.”
Kumiko was also reunited with Kiri the cat, her sister. In 2023, Ambler’s 19-year-old daughter Shaelee wanted to adopt a pair on bonded sister cats and they found Kumiko and Kiri through a shelter in Florida.
“Kiri was legit depressed” when Kumiko went missing, so they ended up adopting another kitten, Daisy, Ambler said. With Kumiko back, the family is up to four cats and one dog.
Reuniting the sister cats was a bit dicey at first, with Kiri immediately launching at Kumiko, hissing and clawing, but within a couple days the sisters were bumping noses and rubbing on each other.
“They are back to being sisters again,” Ambler said.
The cats now wear Apple AirTags, which track their locations real time in case one gets lost again.
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