Jamela Goes Home!

Jamela was already an experienced traveler by the time she and her human family arrived at their duty station at Ft Meade. After all, living with a military family the pretty calico tabby was used to moving every couple of years. Originally adopted in Texas in 2008, she quickly settled in with the mom, dad and 3 kids, becoming a special buddy to the youngest, a little girl with severe ADD/ADHD. 

Unfortunately, for Jamela’s family, things weren’t going well for the humans and the adults decided to separate and divorce. It was decided that the mom, Danielle and kids would move back to her home town of Olympia, Washington.  Although she would be living on the other side of the country, the humans knew that Jamela would make the trip and settle into the new home without any problems.  Knowing that moving across the country by herself  with three young children and setting up a new household would be stressful, Danielle decided to move first, then fly back for Jamela.  In the meantime, Jamela would live at Ft Meade with her human dad. 

Unfortunately, the day after her human kids left, Jamela slipped out of the house and into the night. By the time Danielle came by for her a few days later, Jamela was gone. 

What Danielle didn’t know was that Jamela had been picked up as a stray on the army base and turned over to Anne Arundel County Animal Control just a few hours before her plane landed.  Because Jamela was picked up as a stray by an animal control officer, there was no report of a lost or found cat with the authorities at Ft Meade.  After a frantic search in the area, Danielle had to return to Olympia without Jamela.

In the meantime Yvonne Hall, the kennel manager at Animal Control had a different problem: a stray cat from Ft Meade with an unregistered microchip.  She was sure that this particular cat had a loving home somewhere she was going to have to do some detective work to figure out where.  She finally traced some of the information from the cat’s microchip manufacturer to a veterinary clinic in Texas, where the microchip was implanted in the cat.  However, the vet clinic only stored microchip information on paper records and was reluctant to expend the employee hours to look for the information.  Eventually, Yvonne’s persistence won out and Jamela’s family was found!
Now there were just a couple of problems: getting Jamela back to her family almost 3,000 miles away and getting her over a bad case of pneumonia.

Knowing that Rude Ranch Animal Rescue was able to help reunite lost pets and their families in the past, Yvonne contact us to work on the logistics of getting Jamela to her family (especially her human children) while the medical staff working on getting her healthy enough to come to Rude Ranch.  Eventually, Jamela’s pneumonia was cured and she made the trip to Rude Ranch.  Once there Rude Ranch veterinarians continued to monitor her health to make sure she would be able to make the trip Olympia without any problems.  As soon as Jamela was healthy enough to travel she got all her vaccines and her health certificate for travel.  Lucky for Jamela, a retired US Air employee was able to escort her to Seattle, Washington on Friday, May 3.  Being a seasoned traveler, Jamela made the trip (including a plane change in Phoenix) without any problems.  Danielle met Jamela and her escort for a happy reunion at the airport. 

Although Jamela is still getting settled in her new west coast home, she is happy to have her family and “her” kids back with her. The reunited family is looking forward to many happy uneventful years to come!