Ukrainian refugees reunite with cat lost at SFO for a month after arriving in the Bay Area

Yaemiko the cat has quite the tale.

Yaemiko's owner, Larysa Ivanenko, and her family fled worn-torn Ukraine in June and emigrated to the United States, resettling near Sacramento. They had to leave the cat behind.

Once moved in, however, Ivanenko began the paperwork needed for permission to have the 3.5-year-old Selkirk Rex cat shipped to the U.S. and reunited with her.

"He is a part of my family," Ivanenko said.

But on Oct. 22, after arriving at San Francisco International Airport, Yaemiko escaped from his handler and disappeared onto the airport property.

For nearly one month, Yaemiko fended for himself in a foreign environment as his distraught humans tried desperately to find him. Ivanenko returned to the airport every day for the next 20 days looking for Yaemiko, calling out his name and trying to lure him out with food but with no luck.

"After 20 days, my belief in finding him was small," Ivanenko said.

Unaware of any of this going on, an SFO cargo worker named Gregorio spotted Yaemiko at the airport. A volunteer cat rescuer, Gregorio set out a cage to trap Yaemiko, and on Monday was able to capture the cat. He then brought Yaemiko to Nine Lives Foundation clinic in Redwood City. Assuming Yaemiko was a feral cat, the plan was to neuter Yaemiko and then return him to the wild.

Cat Clinic Supervisor Clare Sugarman knew instantly this wasn't an ordinary feral cat.

"I took just one look at this cat and said this cat probably has a microchip because this looks like a cat that has an owner that would want to know if it went missing," Sugarman said.

Sugarman was right about the microchip, but when it pointed to an address in Ukraine, "I knew we had something unusual going on," she said.

After a day's worth of detective work, Sugarman and her colleagues were able to track down a phone number for Ivanenko.

"I cried. I screamed. I jumped," Ivanenko said.

Ivanenko and Yaemiko were tearfully reunited at Nive Lives Foundation headquarters on Tuesday.

"In a moment we’ll never forget, Larysa and her daughter broke down in tears as we handed Yaemiko’s carrier over to them," Nine Lives wrote in a Facebook post. "After everything they had endured, their family was finally whole. Yaemiko, their last connection to home, was back in their arms where he belongs."