Watch: Cat flees from owner at truck stop, turns up 670 miles away

Jan. 8 (UPI) -- An Illinois trucker was reunited with his cat after the feline fled from his vehicle during a pit stop at a truck stop in Nevada.

Chad McIntyre, of Decatur, said his cat, Tyler, often accompanies him on his long-haul drives.

"It's nice that he's lying there in the passenger seat, and yeah, he doesn't talk back, but it's nice to have somebody, something to talk to," McIntyre told KSTU-TV.

McIntyre said he was changing Tyler's litter box when the feline wandered off at a Flying J Truck Stop in Fernley.

"I had to deliver to Walmart so I had to leave, and I was gone for about 2 1/2 hours and came right back and started to look for him again," McIntyre said. "The next day, I had to go to California. Then, I came back the next night after that and tried to look for him again, still couldn't find him."

Brandi McIntyre, Chad's wife, sounded the alarm about Tyler's missing status on the trucker social media network and missing pet groups on Facebook.

Tyler turned up five days later at a Flying J Truck Stop in Rock Springs, Wyo., about 670 miles away from Fernley. The cat was taken to a local animal shelter and scanned for a microchip, which gave rescuers McIntyre's contact information.

Rock Springs Animal Control supervisor Lydia Gomez worked with independent transport coordinator Joan Nickum to get Tyler a ride home to Illinois.

Nickum coordinated a series of drivers to take Tyler from shelter to shelter along the route until he was home in Decatur.

"There's no way we could do it without the many, many volunteers who use their time and their own money and cars to make these transports," Nickum told Cowboy State Daily. "This is all done by volunteers across the country willing to give of themselves to make these rescues happen."

The McIntyers said Tyler won't be getting lost at anymore truck stops anytime soon.

"He's grounded from going on the truck for a while," Brandi McIntyre said. "My husband and I just have decided that maybe it's better if he stays home for at least a while, and then maybe down the road he can go again."