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Lost cat was on road trip

By Staff | Apr 1, 2012

After returning home from his road trip, Henry poses with the rest of the greenhouse crew and is happy to have everything back to normal.

Denny and Diana McTamaney of Gartzke’s Greenhouse found themselves on a two week long cat hunt after their beloved greenhouse mascot Henry disappeared.

It was March 14 when they discovered Henry, the well-loved tabby, had gone missing.

The day had gone as usual with a plant truck arriving to make a regular delivery.

“It was 4:30 p.m. when the truck was here that day,”?Diana recalls. “It was 5 p.m. that we realized he was gone so we really started looking.”

“Diana put out about 30 posters, had a notice on the radio and put in the newspaper,”?Denny explains.

Diana even thought to call the plant truck that had been there not too long before. “He checked the truck but said Henry wasn’t in there,”?she says.

As the search at home continued, Henry was busy putting on some miles 156 to be exact.

“Finally we got a call from a hotel,”?Diana recalls. “That’s where the plant truck had been.”

Denny explains that the connection from the caller wasn’t very clear but Diana understood that the hotel thought they had found Henry.

“I tried not to get my hopes up,”?Diana says.

The hotel called back and confirmed that the cat was Henry.

“They were asking where we were,” Diana explains. “When I?told them Blue Earth they kept asking where that was.”

Turns out Henry was in Hudson, Wis., and had rode all the way there in the back of the plant truck.

The hotel kept Henry in a worker’s vehicle there until they could pick him up.

“It’s lucky they found him when they did because his collar with our phone number was still on,”?Diana says. “By the time we had picked him up he had lost enough weight that his collar fell off.”

The McTamaneys said that in the two weeks 18-pound Henry was gone, he had lost 25 percent of his body weight.

Denny made the trip to Wisconsin on March 28 to bring Henry back home.

“He whined all the way home,”?Denny says. “He meowed so much I?figured he’d lose his voice.”?

All of the greenhouse customers love Henry and were happy about his safe return. Henry was too.

The McTamaneys had adopted Henry from the Faribault County Humane Society when he was 5 years old and has been a part of Gartzke’s Greenhouse family for a year and a half now.

“Henry was so timid when he first came here he wouldn’t leave the corner of the shop,”?Denny says. Now Henry has crossed the state line.

The greenhouse cat has returned to his chair in the shop and is working on getting his figure back after his two-week long vacation.