Cat home after 3-year, 2,000-mile journey

HOBART, Australia, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- A long-haired cat named Clyde was returned to his family Wednesday in Tasmania after turning up at the other end of Australia three years after he went missing.

Television cameras recorded the reunion between the Himalyan and Katrina Phillips in the Derwent Valley near Hobart, The Tasmania Mercury reported. Phillips said she was excited, but Clyde appeared to be taking everything in stride.

"He was so relaxed it was like he never left home," Phillips, 19, said.

Donna Weber, a veterinarian in Cloncurry in the Queensland Outback more than 2,000 miles north of Hobart, identified Clyde from a microchip in his ear earlier this week, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. The cat wandered into the grounds of the Cloncurry Hospital a few months ago, and staffers there had been taking care of him.

"We don't know where he's come from to get to the hospital, if he's run away from some tourists traveling through or if he's been walking all the way from Tasmania," Weber said.

Weber said Phillips and her family plastered the area around their home with signs after Clyde disappeared but heard nothing of him.