The Amazon returns employee wasn't at work the day one of her colleagues at a California warehouse found a small, furry stowaway in a box mailed six days earlier from Utah.
But Brandy Hunter got the call anyway.
“Everyone knows I love cats,” she recalled. “I was not on shift but went to the facility with cat food and a carrier to see if I could help.”
When she got there April 16, the small calico had emerged from the 3-by-3-foot cardboard container. But the feline was frightened and wouldn't eat anything.
“She eventually warmed up to me and let me pet her,” Hunter said in her statement from Amazon. “I could tell she belonged to someone by the way she was behaving, so I took her home that night.”
Hunter planned to feed and cuddle the wee hitchhiker, she said. She also would take her the next day to a vet for an exam – and to check for a microchip that might hold the secret to her identity.
Meanwhile, some 630 miles away in Lehi, Utah, Carrie Stevens Clark had been eagerly searching for her lost cat, then missing for nearly a week, she told CNN. Galena, a 6-year-old indoor shorthair, tended to be quiet and often froze in uncomfortable situations.
She also loved boxes.
And Clark's family loved her.
They had prayed for her swift return, Clark said, even undertaking a one-day fast, a regular practice during challenging times within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
But still, no Galena.
A not-so-micro discovery
Back in California, Hunter took her new foster to the vet. An exam revealed she was not injured, had a regular temperature and was only mildly dehydrated, the Amazon worker posted on Facebook.
The vet also made a key discovery: The cat was, in fact, microchipped.
Soon, another phone – in Lehi, Utah – was ringing.
Clark initially thought it was a prank, she said: The caller – in Jurupa Valley, California, west of Los Angeles – had found her lost cat. And the vet sent proof: all the information from Galena's microchip.
“I knew at that point she really had my cat,” Clark told CNN.
But how?
“We literally had emotions of laughing hysterically to crying hysterically,” she said. “They were so intense. It was just the strangest emotion feeling both of those at the same time.”
Galena, Clark soon learned, had been found in the Amazon return box.
That's when she put it all together.
Boxed in before a trio of 'miracles'
“The box is Galena's absolute favourite place to play in, and she's pretty chill and happy when she's in a box,” Clark told CNN.
On April 10, Carrie, with her husband Matt Clark, had been packing up work boots to ship. “What happened was my husband had packed up the shoes, and he kept one pair and put the other five back in the box.”
Then, Matt closed the flaps of the box before leaving the room to get tape and scissors.
“Galena must have snuck into the box without him seeing and without us knowing, and then he came back and taped the box back up,” Carrie Clark said. “She loves to hide in boxes, so she was pretty happy in there. She didn't make any noise.”
UPS then ferried away the box, Amazon representative Alisa Carroll told CNN.
That's when, by Clark's estimation, a trio of “miracles” started kicking in.
One of the box's seams wasn't completely sealed, allowing Galena enough oxygen to breathe, Clark said. Also, the weather was perfectly stable – not too hot or too cold – so Galena did not freeze or get overheated.
And then she arrived in Jurupa Valley, where Hunter, who rescues cats as a side hustle, picked up her phone. She was “the only person at that warehouse who knew how to handle the situation” and recognized it was an accident and “wasn't malicious by any means,” Clark said.
Soon, the Clarks were on a plane.
Galena's grand greeting
“We were so nervous,” Clark said of the flight. “I was so anxious to see her and just get to her. That's the only thing I could think of was, 'I just want to get to my cat.'”
Still, “we didn't know what kind of shape she would be in,” she said.
Eight days after Galena was unwittingly packed up and two days after the warehouse discovery, Clark and her husband stepped into an exam room at the California vet's office.
Clark began to coo, as Hunter recorded video she later posted online.
“It's Mommy,” she said, her eyes locked on Galena, crouched on a blue exam table.
“Hi … Hi, my baby.”
“My darling,” Clark said, curling Galena into her chest and rocking back and forth.
“This is my baby.”
“This moment,” Hunter posted of the reunion, “was absolutely amazing (full of happy tears!!).”
Then, Galena – after days of being too scared to eat and still rapt with exhaustion and stressed to the point of shedding – let Clark feed her by hand.
A purr-fect ending
For the whole 10-hour drive back to Utah, Clark stared at Galena as she slept. And soon, Clark said, her furry companion was back to her usual self.
“We're really pleased Brandy was able to help Galena reunite with her family,” Amazon's Carroll said.
Galena will likely continue to be a massive box lover – hopefully without again taking off in one. And now, with their beloved cat back safe and sound, the Clarks want to emphasize the importance of microchips for pets.
“The main reason we were able to be reunited back with her again was because of her microchip, so we encourage all pet owners to microchip their pets,” she said. “It's a really, really easy procedure. It's just a tiny microchip that goes in the back of their shoulder blades.”
For Clark, though, the biggest takeaway runs much deeper.
“God's hand is in the details of our lives. Like, he's really the one who can control it all. And if he wants something to happen, he can easily make it happen,” she said. “And that's honestly my main purpose.”
