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There are many stories about pets who have traveled thousands of miles to be reunited with their owners, using their unerring sense of direction to take them back home against incredible odds. Wally the cat took a different approach when he was separated from his owner, however.

Instead of sniffing his way back home, Wally heeded the advice given to children when they become lost - he stayed put, and let the rescue come to him.

Wally, a black tabby, is the beloved pet of Senior Airman Kevin Sanders, who lives in Minot with his wife Jesica and has been in the Air Force for 2 1/2 years. Sanders grew up in Van Vleck, Texas, which is two hours south of Houston, close to the coast.

Sanders has had Wally since he was young and the bond between the two never faded, even after he moved away around five years ago to start college and pursue a career in the Air Force.

"Wally's about 12 years old, I guess. We got him when I was still in junior high, and you know, I kind of grew up with him. I went to college and the Air Force and came home every now and again and he was always around," Sanders said. "He was always kind of an outside cat."

After Sanders' mother passed away Jan. 12, 2007, his stepfather moved to Arizona nine months later and eventually sold the home in Texas. Sanders was in the Air Force at the time, so Wally was left with the home's new owners.

"I hadn't gone back after the funeral until ... May of '09," Sanders said. "My brother had been back once, and he said he thought he saw him there, but he wasn't sure, because he ran away."

Sanders' father moved back to the area in December to help take care of Sanders' grandparents, so he went back with his wife in May to visit.

Sanders drove his wife past the house because she had never seen it before, and she snapped a picture before they stopped to take a closer look. Although they didn't know it at the time, Wally can actually be seen in that picture. There were three cats in the yard, and after getting close enough to make them out, Sanders couldn't believe his luck.

"When we went to the house, he was sitting out front," Sanders said. "I looked at him and I called his name, and he meowed and walked right up to me."

"He hopped out of the car and he said, 'Wally, is that you?'" said Jesica Sanders. "And the cat meowed and comes over and he was petting him. It was so cute. It was so cute. I had tears."

She said some neighbors who recognized Sanders came into the yard told him Wally had never left, and was always there waiting for somebody to come get him.

"I thought that was really cute that the neighbors said, 'He's never left the yard,'" Jesica said.

Needless to say, finding Wally at his old home was the furthest thing from Kevin's mind at the time.

"My brother had said he might be there, but I hadn't expected him to be there because he was old when I left for college. So it was pretty cool finding him down there," he said. "It was really unexpected, and then the fact that he recognized me after like five years of being gone was pretty cool, too.

"Because I hadn't been to the house much at all after I graduated high school and went off to college. And then I came home for, you know, a couple months here and there in the summer, but really I was only home for maybe four or five months over a course of 2 1/2 years before I joined the Air Force."

The home's current owners, Jimmy and Annie McCouley, weren't home at the time, so the Sanders left a note on the door that morning with their phone number. The McCouleys called back later that evening and invited the Sanders over.

"Not only did they have the cat, but they had a bunch of Kevin's stuff, like probably six big boxes worth of his mom's stuff that the stepdad just didn't take," Jesica said. "(They took) decorations right off the wall and crystal vases, stuff that, you know, normal people, less honest people, would never have said, 'This giant crystal vase is your mom's. Please take it.'"

Jesica said the McCouleys went through the whole house room by room taking things off of tables and walls and giving them to Kevin because they belonged to his mother. Glassware, several expensive vases and some nativity sets were just a few of the things the McCouleys had kept all those years and gladly returned.

"They just didn't touch or mess with (the items) because they said they knew that it meant something to him," Jesica said.

"They were really great people," Kevin added.

Now that he's back with the Sanders in Minot, Wally is doing quite well. Jesica said he loves to be petted by everyone, but there is one person whose lap always takes top priority.

"He's happy, he loves to be petted. And I can be petting him, and if Kevin walks into the room, he'll go over to him. He still loves Kevin more than anyone," Jesica said, noting that not everything has stayed the same with Wally. "He never wants to go outside. He'd been outside that whole time. He never even sits at the door. He's just so happy to have a soft place to sleep."

While Wally has had to adjust to a new place to live in Minot, he has also had to adjust to new roommates because the Sanders have four other animals - Iniko, a male two-year-old Bengal cat; Kisses, a female 1 1/2-year-old stray tabby; Seth, a male three-year-old German shepherd mix; and Mena, a female six-month-old German shepherd.

"We had some dogs when I was growing up, and a lot of neighborhood cats, and he was living with two cats down there when we found him, so he's used to being around other animals," Kevin said. "It really took him maybe two, three weeks to get adjusted, which is not bad for an old cat. He's doing really well."

Jesica said the addition of Wally to their growing family was a complete surprise, but one they welcome with open arms.

"We did not intend to have this many, but they're like kids, they just happen sometimes," she said.

"Especially Wally," Kevin added.