“神貓”徒行200英里返家走紅網絡

Holly the cat: A Florida feline's 200-mile two-month journey home baffles scientists

中國日報網 2013-01-28 15:13

How Holly, a house cat who rarely ventured outside, managed to make it to back to her hometown from unknown terrain so far away has baffled animal behaviourists.

Holly the cat has become an internet sensation, mystified animal experts [and used up an unknown number of her nine lives] by trekking 200 miles home after disappearing on a family road trip eight weeks earlier.

Exhausted and emaciated, barely able to stand and too weak to miaow, the cat appeared from nowhere on New Year's Eve in the back garden of a Florida family home.

For six days, Barb Mazzola and her children put out food and milk for the nervous animal, eventually coaxing her inside their house in West Palm Beach.

They fell in love with the cat, a tortoiseshell with distinctive black, brown and ginger patterning. But when Mrs Mazzola took it to the vet, she reluctantly asked if the cat had an implanted microchip that would identify its original owners.

She did. And it turned out her name was Holly and that her owners Jacob and Bonnie Richter lived just a mile away.

But what was truly remarkable was that they had lost Holly two months earlier when she bolted out of their mobile home on a trip to Daytona Beach – 200 miles north along Florida's Atlantic coast.

How Holly, a house cat who rarely ventured outside, managed to make it to back to her hometown from unknown terrain so far away has baffled animal behaviourists.

It has also turned her into an internet sensation among feline aficionados and spawned countless theories about how sights, sounds and smells, an inner compass or some memories of the drive north may have guided her homeward odyssey.

"It is a complete mystery," said Marc Bekoff, a University of Colorado professor who specialises in animal behaviour. "She may have had some basic sense of direction and then got clues from sights or sounds as she got closer, but the truth is that we have no idea how she got home."

What seems certain, judging from the state of its paws, is that it walked home by road and pavement, rather than somehow hitching a lift or going cross-country. Its back feet, the ones that cat use to propel themselves, were swollen, rubbed and raw and the claws were worn down to stubs.

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(Agencies)

“神貓”霍莉近日走紅網絡，也令動物學家大惑不解。它在一次家庭駕車游中走失，歷時八周徒步200英里返回家中，此時已筋疲力盡。

新年前夜，在佛羅里達一戶家庭的后院出現一只貓，它看起來筋疲力盡，神情憔悴，勉強站立著，連叫聲都發不出來了。

六天來，巴伯?馬佐拉和她的孩子們一直給這只緊張兮兮的小貓喂食物與牛奶，最后又把它帶到位于西棕櫚灘的家中。

他們對這只小貓寵愛有加，它的毛色為黃褐黑白相間，黑、棕、姜黃三色相間的圖案十分顯眼。不過，當抱著它去獸醫那里時，馬佐拉夫人不很心甘情愿地問起這只貓身上是否植入了芯片，以便其主人辨識。

她還是問了。結果得知這只貓名叫霍莉，它的主人雅各布?里克特和邦妮?里克特就住在一英里外。

不過，真正神奇的是，兩個月前，在隨主人全家乘房車去德托納比奇的行程中，霍莉跳出了車子，從此音訊全無。德托納比奇位于佛羅里達的大西洋沿岸以北200英里處。

名叫霍莉的這只家貓從未獨自外出過，它是如何從未知的某地徒行回家的呢？對此，動物行為學家也頗為費解。

霍莉也由此在養貓愛好者中躥紅，并在網上走紅。人們開始展開大討論，探討視覺、聽覺、味覺、內置指南針、或北上行程中的一些記憶片段如何指引著霍莉完成返家的長途跋涉。

“這完全讓人費解”，科羅拉多大學教授、動物行為研究專家馬克?貝科夫說道?！八赡苡幸欢ǖ姆较蚋?，于是越往前走，就會通過視覺或聽覺找到一些線索。不過，說實話，我們不知道它是如何回家的。”

從貓爪的情況來看，有一點似乎是可以肯定的，即它確實是沿公路和人行道徒步回來的，而不是搭順風車或穿越野地。它的后腳掌（貓用來推進身體運動）腫脹起來，磨破了皮，爪子磨得只剩一小段了。