It was an ordinary day. Reading about Carrie Clark receiving a telephone call this past April 17 from a veterinarian in California informing her that her cat which had vanished from her Utah home a week earlier, had been found some 500 miles away. Her first reaction was disbelief. Carrie said that she could not believe that it was true. She at first thought it was a prank. But, before long she found out it wasn't a prank. Her 6-year-old American short hair named "Galena" had sneaked inside a 3-by-3-foot cardboard Amazon returns package alongside five pairs of steel-toed boots and was transported two states away to one of the company's warehouses, where it was discovered by Amazon employees. Galena survived the unexpected journey without any food or water, Carrie said. Despite her ordeal, Galena was in relatively good health with no issues except mild dehydration. Two factors had helped: One seam of the box had been unglued, allowing oxygen to circulate, and mild weather kept Galena from overheating or freezing. "It's really a miracle that she was able to survive," Clark said. Carrie said she thought Galena got into the box while her husband was packing it, by jumping inside when he left to fetch some tape to seal it. "She doesn't meow a lot and she loves boxes, so for her, she was really happy in that moment, although I'm sure that wasn't the case later on." Since the box already weighed more than 30 pounds, Clark and her husband, who live in the city of Lehi, near Salt Lake City, did not notice the added weight of a stowaway when they mailed it April 10. But, they did quickly notice that their shy indoor cat was missing that same day. After days of searching the house and neighborhood turned up nothing, worst-case scenarios started running through her mind. Had Galena darted outside without anyone noticing? Had she been snapped up by a predator? Or ended up in the river behind the house? "We had absolutely no idea what had happened," Clark said. "It was really challenging; I was definitely in a lot of grief." Then she received a call from a veterinarian in Riverside, California. An Amazon employee had brought Galena in, and the vet identified her through her microchip and contacted Clark. Carrie, who could not immediately be reached for comment, said on Facebook that she received a call from co-workers who had opened a returns box and found a cat inside. "We have gotten some pretty crazy things in my time, but never anything like that she wrote. She said she had driven to the warehouse to catch and look after the cat, which she said had spent days in the box "in the back of a trailer full of items being returned to Amazon." Luckily the story had a happy ending. Well, my wife and I have two indoor cats, "The Gray Lady" and "Snickeredoodle" and we would be lost without one of them. I can understand the pain and anguish that the Clarks must have experienced during the time that their cat was missing. Just so lucky that their cat was able to survive for so long without food and water. I'll bet then don't leave that cat out of their sight anymore! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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