Athena the cat is home safe, exactly three weeks after being let off a bus.
“It?s amazing,” the cat?s owner Ali Streimer said.
The saga began after Thanksgiving when the former Baltimore resident was on her way back from Pikesville to New York with her cat.
As Streimer napped, Athena freed herself from the carrier and began wandering up the bus aisle. The Hunt Valley Motor Bus driver dropped the cat off at the next stop in Carney, thinking it was a stray that had snuck on board, according to a spokesman for the company. Pets are not allowed on the bus, although Streimer said she didn?t know that and often traveled with Athena tucked in a carrier when she took the bus to visit family here.
On Monday, Streimer returned to Pikesville to help her mother in the search.
Hours later, Athena resurfaced.
“It was just the timing; we got lucky,” Streimer said in a phone interview from New York.
Streimer spotted Athena in a yard near the bus stop. Athena was healthy but so “freaked,” as her family put it, that Streimer had to set up traps to catch her pet. It took a few hours before Streimer and her father, Stewart Streimer, took the cat to the Carney Animal Hospital, where she got a clean bill of health.
By Monday evening, Streimer, her father and Athena were in the car ? not on the bus this time ? heading back to New York.
They credit the residents of Carney for their unrelenting interest and support in the search.
“The community there was just so incredible,” Streimer?s mother Gayle Becker said. “Everybody was just so on board and making such an effort to encourage us to not give up.”
Becker said she received “zillions” of calls from people offering their prayers, assistance and even cats after The Examiner published a story about Athena?s plight. Some printed and posted fliers. Athena also received free care from the animal hospital, and another patron there donated a cat carrier.
