After an accidental trip via courier service, a 17-hour drive and a 2,400-kilometre round trip, the cat came back. 
 
 A Nova Scotia family was reunited with their pet Saturday night after the animal crawled into a box bound for Alberta more than a week ago. 
 
 Purolator employees discovered the cat in Montreal and called the local SPCA, which tracked down its owners. 
 
 Jacqueline Lake had been searching for her family's one-year-old tabby for four days when she got the call. 
 
 She and her family thought the cat might have escaped while the kids were leaving for school. They put up flyers and went around the neighbourhood knocking on doors and looking under sheds. 
 
 "I was really starting to lose hope he was going to come back. He's a very docile kitty, but he's very curious and gets into things," said Lake. 
 
 Volunteers drove him home 
 
 Lake guessed that the cat, Baloo, had crawled into a package containing a tire rim in the hour before she shipped it off. She thought it was strange that one of the packages weighed 10 lbs more than the others, but dismissed it as a possible problem with the rims. 
 
 "He never made a sound, a single sound," she said. 
 
 Lake said she is "eternally grateful" to the SPCA and the network of volunteers with the organization Freedom Drivers who relayed Baloo back home. 
 
 "I didn't have money to travel to Montreal to get my cat back, but we got him. I didn't have to pay anything. It was pretty amazing they did this for us," Lake said. 
 
 Her daughter Victoria Lake was bouncing up and down as she waited for her beloved cat. 
 
 "I told my mother, 'Why did you mail my cat?'" she said. "He was probably sleeping and he snuck out to probably get some food. He does hide a lot." 
 
 Baloo is safe and sound after volunteers drove him from Montreal to Dartmouth, N.S. (Montreal SPCA) 
 
 Baloo, for his part, appeared to be healthy. He ran straight to the family's other cat and then to his food dish. 
 
 "I think he was a little stressed out. He's really a big baby. I can tell from being in with the rims he needs his own little shower," said Jacqueline Lake. "He's got a week's worth of eating to do." 
 
 Freedom Drivers, based in Montreal, usually shuttles animals to shelters in Ontario and Nova Scotia. One person took the cat and a puppy all the way to Truro, N.S. Ryan Dixon and his mother handled the last 90 kilometres of the journey. 
 
 "This was the first one we got to reunite with the actual owner of the pet … I think they're going to have a good Christmas," he said. 

 A Halifax-area pet who nestled into a box for a catnap ended up 1,200 kilometres from home after his owner unknowingly sealed him inside and shipped it away. 
 
 Jackie Lake says her cat, one-year-old Baloo, snuck into a box and nestled in for a catnap while she was boxing up some tire rims to send to a friend in Alberta. 
 
 “The cat never made a sound. I’m telling you, he was in stealth mode,” said Lake in an interview. 
 
 WATCH: A hero’s welcome: New Brunswick cat rescued by dog reunites with saviour 
 
 Not knowing that her pet was inside one of the parcels, she shipped it off on Thursday, Dec. 6. The next day, she realized Baloo was missing. 
 
 Thus began a panicked search of the neighbourhood, where Lake and her three children spent the weekend hanging up posters, setting out bowls of food and knocking on doors. 
 
 “He always tries to escape, he loves the intrigue,” said Lake, explaining that they believed the cat had simply gotten outside. 
 
 READ MORE: BooBoo the cat, missing from California, found happy and healthy in Guelph 
 
 So she got quite a shock when she got a call from Purolator on Monday, and learned the cat had been discovered 1,200 kilometres away at a facility in Montreal. 
 
 “I mailed a cat!” she said. “I literally started bawling and screaming into the phone, ‘Did I kill my cat?'” 
 
 Luckily, Baloo was fine. He was looked after by the local SPCA, who Lake said “treated him like royalty,” and even microchipped him for free so he can be found more easily if he takes any more impromptu vacations. 
 
 WATCH: Missing cat found 10 years later, reunited with Calgary owner 
 
 Anita Kapuscinska, communications director for the Montreal SPCA, said she was glad the story had a happy ending. 
 
 “You could imagine their surprise when they received the call confirming that their missing cat was alive and well in Montreal,” she said. 
 
 She said Baloo will be home for the holidays: Freedom Drivers, a group of volunteers that transport shelter animals, left Montreal Friday evening to take him home. 
 
 READ MORE: Family pet lost after December crash found safe and sound 
 
 Kapuscinska recommends that anyone with a cat double-check any packages before sending them out to prevent any hairy situations in the future. 
 
 “We all know that cats love boxes, so hopefully we’ll all be a little more vigilant when packing up boxes in the future,” she said. 
 
 As for Lake, she said she’s happy that Baloo is coming back to his loving home. 
 
 “I’m so glad that he’s okay, and everybody worked so hard to get him back to me,” she said. 
 
 She added that her kids are especially excited to see their beloved pet. 
 
 “Although they’ll never let me live this down,” she added.
– For four days, Baloo was missing from her family's Nova Scotia home. The feline is now back, but not before she took a 1,500-mile round trip, half of it in a box. Jacqueline Lake tells the CBC that when her family's tabby cat first vanished, she suspected he'd slipped out the front door when her kids went to school one morning. After an exhaustive search around the neighborhood, however, another nagging thought entered Lake's mind: She'd shipped tire rims to a friend in Alberta on Dec. 6 and now wondered if Baloo had crawled inside one of the boxes before she sealed it. Sure enough, the following Monday, four days after Baloo disappeared, a call came in from the Purolator courier company, which said the cat had emerged in Montreal. Purolator tapped the local SPCA, which managed to tie Baloo to his family in Dartmouth. Volunteers with an animal rescue and transport company stepped up to drive Baloo all the way back home on Saturday. Lake, who now recalls one of the boxes she'd sent out was 10 pounds heavier than the others (she chalked it up to a defect with the rim), marvels that Baloo was able to sneak into the box without her noticing and stay so quiet during the mailing process. "The cat never made a sound," she says, per Global News. "I'm telling you, he was in stealth mode." Lake says the SPCA treated Baloo "like royalty" and has microchipped him in case he ever finds himself outside the Dartmouth area again. Lake's daughter is glad he's now back home, but when they found out what had happened, she had one question for her mom: "Why did you mail my cat?" (This isn't the first time a cat has gone postal.)