Here's a nice story (from the "Greenbay Gazette"):

Frazzled feline finds its way back to Oconto Co. home after tornado

Smoky disappeared after June storm

By Patti Zarling
pzarling@greenbaypressgazette.com

RIVERVIEW — Smoky the cat may have gone through several of his nine lives, but he is home again after surviving a tornado that ravaged this rural Oconto County town earlier this summer.

He's lost a few pounds and likes to hide under the table, but the tiny cat is back where he belongs — with mom Wanda Ploeger.

Ploeger lost nearly everything in the tornado that ripped through her home on June 7. The powerful winds lifted her trailer home from its foundation with Smoky inside. Ploeger was at work that evening.

The tornado cut a 40-mile path though Langlade, Menominee, Oconto and Shawano counties. It scattered Ploeger's belongings throughout the countryside. Smoky was nowhere to be found.

Ploeger has been living with her ex-husband since the storm, but she continued to look for her kitty companion.

"I would go out there at night, around 11 p.m., because that's when he usually would be outside," she said.

Ploeger said she never got the sense Smoky died and always believed he'd come back.

"I kept telling my sister I never got a feeling about him," she said. "With other animals I'd always get a feeling. She never said anything because she didn't want to get my hopes up, but I always thought he'd come back."

While driving along the highway on Sept. 15, about two-and-a-half miles from where her trailer used to be, Ploeger saw a white streak and asked the driver to stop the truck. She got out and called for Smoky. The cat had gone over the hill so she crouched on the hill and called until it came up to her.

Smoky's a little worse for wear — the 10-pound cat dropped to seven pounds. He also is taking antibiotics for an abscess, which he might have suffered while fighting another animal, Ploeger said.

Smoky has lived with Ploeger since he was 6 weeks old. He liked to go outside, but usually stayed very close to home. He hasn't appeared to want to go out since returning home, Ploeger said.

Smoky can't tell her about his three-month adventure, but Ploeger said he is happy to be home.

The day of the storm wasn't Ploeger's day to work, but her boss asked her to change shifts. She punched the clock at Nicolet Plastics on June 7 rather than June 6.

When she tried to get home that night, fallen trees blocked her usual route so she drove around to enter the road from the other side. But authorities had that entrance closed so ambulances could get through. Meanwhile, her ex-husband called and told her not to go there, since the mobile home was gone.

All that was left of her 2-year-old home were a few bricks that once anchored it and a cement slab where the garage stood.

Surveying the damage the next day, Ploeger, friends and family began to gather debris, strewn across acres.

In the weeks following the storm, Ploeger wasn't sure if she'd stay or move on. She's now decided to buy another mobile home and stay put.

"It would have cost a fortune to move," she said. "We have the septic, we have the well."

This weekend, she's settling in and said she'll gradually repurchase clothing and furniture.

But it'll be all that much sweeter now that Smoky is moving in, too.

"It wouldn't be the same without him here," she said.