Michele Peterson has no idea how her cat made it all the way to Vernon from her Fintry home, but after being reunited with her furry companion after a month of worry, her only thought is of gratitude for the people who helped bring her back where she belongs. 

Peterson is a cat lover through and through. She has several cats at her home near Fintry along Westside Road. It's a quiet, country area with only the odd car passing by.

One morning, about a month ago, Peterson noticed her three-year-old cat named Franky was missing. 

"She usually comes in the sliding glass doors, and it was at last an hour, it was getting close to 10 a.m., and I was like, 'where's Franky?' Peterson told The Morning Star. 

Franky was nowhere to be seen. In the days and weeks that followed, Peterson did everything humanly possible to find her. 

"I started searching and I didn't stop," she said, explaining Franky would often climb a tree if she was scared, and so she searched "thousands" of trees, from Westshore Estates to Parker Cove and all along the Westside. She put up posters with the hope that someone had seen Franky. 

"Everybody kept telling me to give up," she said. But she refused. She had a "feeling deep down inside" that she would see Franky again. 

That gut feeling was vindicated earlier this week when she got a call from her neighbour that Franky was at the veterinary clinic in Vernon waiting to see her. 

How did her neighbour know this? He had at one time picked up one of the animals Peterson had taken to get neutered, so the vet had his number, Peterson said.

It was explained to Peterson that Franky had been found with a wounded leg by a couple of Good Samaritans one block away from Vernon's hospice house, at least 43 kilometres from her home near Fintry. The couple brought Franky to the vet, where staff examined the tattoo on Franky's ear. The tattoo was hard to read, Peterson said, but vet staff persisted and got a hold of the Armstrong vet clinic, where Franky had been spayed. 

"They just kept working and working and working," Peterson said. 

In the end, the vets were able to identify Franky, call Peterson's neighbour who relayed the news that she had been found, and on Friday Peterson came into the vet office for a long awaited reunion. 

"It's a miracle," said Peterson, who can't imagine how her cat traversed all the way to Vernon and survived as a country cat in a bustling city. 

She wants to thank the veterinary clinic staff, the Okanagan Humane Society which worked with the vets to identify Franky, the Good Samaritans who took the time to bring Franky to safety, and everyone else who helped bring her precious kitty back to her. 

For Peterson, her cats are like her children. Her love for animals was passed down from her father, Chris Gordon Peterson, who used to get animals spayed and neutered before that was common practice. Many times she's found a lost animal and worked to have it returned to its owner, and she said to be on the receiving end of that kind of compassion was the best gift she could have received.

"The people that saved her, everybody involved, I'm so very grateful," she said.