YOU CAN'T TAKE THE CITY OUT OF TIPPY

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 7, 1993                   TAG: 9303070004
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: D-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
YOU CAN'T TAKE THE CITY OUT OF TIPPY
Incredible animal homing instinct incident No. 001 (1990): Bo the cat sleeps on a warm car engine in Greensboro, N.C. Car and driver depart for Roanoke. Bo stays clear of moving parts and runs for his life when car stops in Roanoke for fuel. Animal status: Still at large.
Incredible animal homing instinct incident No. 002 (1992): Flightless duck given to friend in Catawba takes a month to walk to native home, five miles away. Animal status: Slaughtered by a predator within a week of arriving back home.
Incredible animal homing instinct incident No. 003 (1993): Tippy the cat, a 3 1/2-year-old yellowish mutt cat, lives with Kathy Farmer in South Roanoke.
Tippy can go either way. Sometimes he's inside; sometimes he's out. Tippy disappeared for a week in January, and Farmer got scared for his safety.
When Tippy finally returned to scratch at the door, as is his custom, Farmer decided then that Tippy needed more pastoral room in which to wander.
In late January, Farmer put Tippy in the back seat of her sports car and drove. They wound over Windy Gap and cruised into Burnt Chimney. They turned toward Rocky Mount, then a quick left past the school.
"There's a sign there that says, `Dirt and pigs,' " said Farmer, by way of direction. Tippy did not see the sign. He hunkered down in the back seat.
Five miles from Burnt Chimney, Farmer arrived at her boyfriend's house at Smith Mountain Lake. Tommy had agreed to host the cat but has not agreed to see his name in print, and so for the security of the Kathy-Tommy relationship we protect his identity somewhat.
Tommy had bought $34 worth of cat food, which Tippy ate some of the first night. And the next day.
By the third day, he was gone. City cat vanished into the woods.
Kathy returned to work in Roanoke at Tangles on the Market - where she holds court, cuts hair and renovates fingernails. She told her customers of Tippy's woeful tale. Publicly, she mourned.
Ten days after Tippy disappeared into the wilds of Wirtz, Kathy Farmer moped about her kitchen in South Roanoke, making her morning coffee.
There came a familiar scratch at the door, which she dismissed because Tippy was, of course . . . oh, it was too horrible to think. Tommy, in his travels around the greater Wirtz-Burnt Chimney metro area and fearing the worst, had even been pausing in his car to get a close look at familiar-looking road kill.
Kathy Farmer figured the scratching sound for a cruel hoax of her mind.
But outside her door was skinny Tippy. She let him in. He ate five cans of cat food.
The obvious suspect here is Tommy, who swears he had nothing to do with Tippy's odyssey. Farmer says Tommy works in South Boston and infrequently visits Roanoke to deliver cats or for any other reason.
Twenty miles that cat had traveled, skirting the lake, crossing the mountains, fording the streams between Tommy's home and Farmer's apartment.
Animal status: Alive and well, living once again in Roanoke.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB