By: Benjamin  He

Galena the cat had been missing for a week.

Normally, cats don’t show up a lot. Cat owners often report not seeing their cats for hours. Cats infamously only make themselves known when they want attention or food. But Galena, a 6-year-old American shorthair, had been straight-up missing for 6 days.

After almost a week of frantic searching, owner Carrie Clark and her husband were in a panic.

That’s why it was so unexpected when, on April 17, Ms. Clark received a call from a Californian veterinarian telling her that her cat had somehow traveled 500 miles from her original home in Lehi, Utah.

It was so unexpected, in fact, that Ms. Clark believed it was some kind of practical joke. In a Sunday night interview with the New York Times, she said, “I told her: I think this is a prank.”

As soon became evident, it was not a prank. Galena had hopped inside a 3-by-3 foot Amazon shipping box originally meant to return five pairs of steel-toed boots. After a cross country roadtrip across two states, the cat was discovered by Amazon employees inside a warehouse. The cat was found, quite miraculously in good health, her only affliction being mild dehydration.

Ms. Clark said that two factors may have aided Galena in her survival: first, that one of the seams on the box had become unglued, which let her breath, and the second being mild weather, which kept Galena from overheating or freezing.

Ms. Clark theorized that Galena had managed to get into the box by hopping in while her husband finished packing it and went to get tape. Ms. Clark stated that Galena “doesn’t meow a lot and she loves boxes,” hence the reason why Galena had successfully snuck into a box in the first place.

The extra weight of the cat went unnoticed, since the box already weighed about 30 pounds. It was mailed on April 10, and the cat herself was discovered a week later by an Amazon employee named Brandy Hunter, who brought Galena to a veterinarian. The veterinarian then identified Galena by her microchip and called Ms. Clark shortly afterwards. Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“When I got to hold her again, she stopped shaking and knew that I was there for her,” Ms. Clark said. “It was such a miraculous moment.”