Janet Nease said she had nearly given up hope of ever seeing her cat, Sylvester, again when she received a call from a Montreal resident that had discovered the cat whimpering in a suburban parking lot, The Gazette (Montreal) reported Friday.

"He was a wanderer and had gone missing in the past, but usually for only a couple of days," Nease said.

The cat was discovered by Marie Chevarie, who immediately phoned Nease after seeing her phone number on the cat's collar.

"He was just skin and bones and he looked pretty banged up," said Chevarie's daughter-in-law, Marie Dionne. "He was missing clumps of hair and his nose had scabs of blood. And he was limping on one of his paws, which seemed broken and scratched up. But he was still really friendly."

Nease said she traveled to Montreal and took her cat to a veterinarian, where he was fed intravenously and given antibiotics for a paw infection.

She said she does not know how the cat made the 1,000-mile journey to Canada, but noted that one of Sylvester's favorite spots to visit is a campground near her home. She said he may have hitched a ride on someone's camper that was headed to or through the Montreal suburb.