Cat’s Outta the Box: Family Pet Accidentally Shipped 650 Miles with Amazon Returns
Next time you need to return an online purchase, make sure you’re only returning what you intended. One cat, mistakenly closed into an Amazon box, was shipped for return and ended up far from home and far from happy.
By Liz Days · May 2, 2024
Disclaimer: While this article is packaged in a box of next-day delivery facts, it does contain satirical bubble wrap, so pop away!
So many online purchases to return… so little time to check each box for stowaway pets. For Carrie Stevens Clark, triple-checking might’ve been a good idea, but instead, her cat Galena was shipped all the way to California.
Unless Galena was dead asleep in the box from a night high on catnip, camouflaged by a cat-matching mink coat (nope, just work boots for return; the mink actually fit great!), at least three people missed the signs: Clark’s husband Matt on the way to the package drop location, the store employee who received the return, and the Amazon driver. The presumed meowing, clawing, and unmistakably horrific smell of cat urine was apparently not detected by anyone. Luckily, 6 days and 650 miles later in Riverside County, CA, Amazon worker Brandy Hunter discovered Galena in the box, took the cat under her care, and, with the help of Galena’s microchip and a local vet, alerted the family, who flew out to retrieve her.
Clark received what she described as “the most amazing, insane news in the entire world.” She had spent days thinking Galena had simply vanished. “She’s helped me get through really tough stuff in life,” Clark said “I couldn’t imagine living life without her.”
Galena, who finally agreed to speak to the press about her harrowing ordeal, had a few words of her own.
“Meow, I helped Mom Carrie through some ‘really tough stuff' as she said, which is why this hurts as much as it does. Where were you, Mom, to help me through my tough stuff? Where were you when your husband didn’t notice me in the cozy square thing and closed the top (very suspiciously, I might add)? Or when I had to breathe through a slit, jostled around in a moving beast, with no yummies or slurpslurp for who knows how lonnggg?? [6 days] I've always wanted to travel, but... not that way. No."
“We’re in awe of all the little and big miracles that have taken place!” Clark says. She believes that “Brandy [Hunter], a microchip, and God’s grace are the reasons Galena survived.”
This week, in opposition to her parents, Galena proclaimed herself an atheist and is filing to be released from her cat-servatorship.
“People say ‘curiosity killed the cat’, but I’d say lack of curiosity from my parents was what almost killed me. And honestly, I’ve never trusted Dad Matt... if he is even my real Dad.”