On the evening of Saturday, July 27, several Verona teens were stargazing with a telescope around midnight when a friendly tabby mix presented itself in the driveway on Floyd Road. Starved for attention, the cat rubbed against the boys, and it was apparent that she was also very skinny and needing food.
The cat would return over the course of one week, and her bony frame began to fill out. The Verona residents who fed her were concerned that she was a lost cat. She had a green collar and a bell, and she had suffered a recent fight, evidenced by a patch of missing fur and a bite mark. They opted to coax the cat into their garage for safety, which they thought would also give her a chance to wander back home. If only they had known then how far away home was.
As days passed, the cat remained, and often tried to get into the house. The residents posted signs with pictures around the immediate area of Floyd Road and Newman Avenue, as well as at Walgreens, the Verona Pool, Kings, and Petco. When a bystander suggested that they post the notice online with MyVeronaNJ.com, the family submitted two photos and some specifics.
Donna Greco reads MyVeronaNJ.com even though she doesn’t live in Verona any more and when she saw the post on Sunday, August 5, she was shocked: She thought the cat looked very familiar. It looked like her sister’s cat, which had gone missing. But her sister, Cathryn Camerota, also didn’t live in Verona any more, though she once lived very close to the Floyd Road home where the cat was camping out. The Camerota family had moved three years ago from 18 Newman Avenue to a new home in Fairfield, which is at least six miles away.
When she heard from her sister, Cathryn Camerota reached out to Virginia Citrano, the editor of MyVeronaNJ. Citrano put her in touch with the family that had found the cat, and before you knew it, the Camerotas were back in Verona to retrieve their wanderer. Johnny Cat gleefully trotted down the walkway of its adoptive home back to Joe Camerota as if to say “I know you!”
