Janet Williams and Luckie
GREENFIELD – Janet Williams named a six-week-old kitten Luckie when she rescued him 12 years ago. She had no idea just how perfect a moniker it would become.
The Greenfield woman joyfully reunited with the adventurous black cat at the Hancock County animal shelter last Saturday, 16 months after Luckie went missing from her home in Sweetwater Farms just northeast of U.S. 40 and Blue Road.
He had been surrendered by a family who had been feeding him outdoors for the past few months at Chapman Estates nearly three miles away.
Luckie had been on the lam since May 2023 after a couch he was hiding in was moved out of Williams’ home and loaded into a delivery truck.
Williams remembers “freaking out” when the domestic shorthair cat first came up missing. After searching for Luckie every day for the past 16 months, she was close to giving up hope.
“I kept having visions of me finding him again, and that would keep me going, thinking God’s trying to tell me something,” she said. “I prayed a lot, almost every day, and he finally answered my prayers.”
When Luckie first went missing last year, Williams immediately took to Facebook to ask the community to be on the lookout. She even asked the furniture delivery company to look for him, to no avail.
Williams later reviewed home security footage which showed Luckie jumping out of the couch and running under her husband’s car the day he went missing, but she couldn’t tell which direction he had gone after that.
Ever since then, Williams has called the local animal shelter and scoured pet rescue sites several times a week in search of her missing pet – one of eight cats she and her husband care for in their home.
Several times, she’s gone to the Greenfield-Hancock Animal Management office to see if a black cat was her beloved Luckie. On three occasions, she went to see if a cat that had been killed was the same one she rescued back in 2012.
But it was never him. Not until Saturday when Williams once again drove to the local animal shelter to check on the latest posting of a black cat with white markings.
When she arrived Luckie walked right up and nuzzled into her, walking in circles around her legs.
“He came right out of the kennel and started wrapping around my legs and head butting me,” said Williams, who was immediately moved to tears.
“At first it was like I was in denial, like ‘Is this really him?’ because when he left he weighed 9 pounds and now he weighs 16,” she said.
Aside from the weight gain and a small nick above his left eye, Williams said Luckie appears to be in great shape. While the black and white markings appear bigger due to the weight gain, there’s no denying it’s Luckie, she said.
“When he got home, he immediately knew his buddy Avery, who was in the couch with him the day he went missing but had jumped out,” said Williams.
“They went up to each other and touched noses, and he went up and touched noses with one of the other cats he first saw when I brought him home. He’s acting like he’s been here all along,” she said.
It’s been a happy homecoming for Luckie, who appears to have picked up some street smarts and confidence while he was away.
“He was so timid before he left,” said Williams. “He’d go hide and act like a feral cat hiding in the couch a lot of the time, but he’s not a scaredy cat like he used to be. He toughened up while he was out there and came back fierce.”
Christy Bandy, manager of the Greenfield-Hancock Animal Management shelter, said the staff there was overjoyed when Williams was finally reunited with her beloved pet.
“One thing we do require of owners who are reunited with pets is that the pet gets microchipped, so that has been taken care of,” said Bandy, who added that lost pets are three times more likely to be reunited with owners if they are chipped.
The county shelter offers $25 microchipping during normal business from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. weekdays and 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. the first and third Saturday each month. The service comes with a lifetime registration to a national database, making it possible for owners to be reunited with wayward pets.
The county animals shelter is at 740 S. Franklin St. in Greenfield.
For more information, call 317-477-4367 or visit Facebook.com/GreenfieldHAM.
