Max’s incredible story: the cat kidnapped by the Russians in Ukraine ends up in Belarus. But he runs away and hugs the owner again in the Czech Republic

Max’s story is ready to become the plot of a novel if not a film. He is a beautiful reddish cat with white paws and a patch that lived peacefully in Bucha, Ukraine. When the Ukrainian city is invaded by the Russians, the owner and her daughter run away, but he remains there: the woman thought she had time to take her daughter to the relatives and to return before the Russians arrived in their area. But this was not the case and the paths of humans separate from those of the wonderful eight-year-old Maine Coon: while mother and daughter manage to arrive in the Czech Republic, he remains locked in the house.

When Russian troops entered the city they entered homes and took away everything they could: from toys for children to jewelry, from car batteries to electric scooters. And Max is also taken away: the imposing dimensions of the Maine Coon do not go unnoticed and probably some soldiers must have understood its value. From then on, nothing is known about what happened to him.

Until Max reappears in Belarus, about 300 kilometers from Bucha: the cat had escaped from a Russian armored vehicle in which electronic equipment and household appliances had been stolen from Bucha’s homes.

A woman found him who took him to a local animal rights organization. There the volunteers immediately noticed the medal that the cat wore around his neck: on one side the symbol of Batman, on the other the telephone number of its owner. So, 38 days after they parted ways, Max’s owner’s cell phone rings: the cat is alive and is in Gomel, the second most populous city in Belarus.

The cat was treated, shorn because the fur was all dirty with an oily substance, equipped with microchips and documents. But the owner was no longer in Ukraine, but in the Czech Republic. And so that wonderful “machine” of the volunteers was set in motion who first brought it from Belarus to Poland then from there it was taken to the Czech Republic where he was finally able to hug his owner again. An odyssey that lasted 80 days from the moment they separated.