Northern Ont. garden centre gets surprise animal in latest shipment

It’s been quite the week for the newest cat at L’ami’s Garden Centre in North Bay, Ont.

“We got a shipment of bird seed in, we unloaded everything, my brother was on the forklift, shut the forklift off and heard some meowing,” said co-owner Casey L’ami.

The owners were questioning how one of their cats could have already gotten into the order.

“We looked in there and there this little guy was, trapped between two pallets,” said L’Ami.

The cat made the journey to North Bay over three days coming all the way from Manitoba.

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The garden centre contacted the farm that was the source of the shipment to ensure the cat was not being missed by a family and to ask to keep him, staff said in a Facebook post.

“We decided we were going to keep him. He got him checked by our friends over at the Callander Animal Hospital,” said L’Ami.

“Everything is really good, he’s really healthy.”

The cat came with the name Bubba, but L’Ami said told CTV News he wasn’t too responsive to the name so staff at the store decided to change it.

“Because he came from Manitoba, we thought it would be kind of cool to give him a name that related to that, so we decided to call him Toby.”

Now, a week and a half into his new adventure at the garden centre, staff said he has settled right in.

“He’s extremely social, he will come right up to you. We’ve already had customers bring toys and drop off treats for him,” said L’Ami.

“He’s already part of the family.”

Toby joins two other cats already at the centre, Boots and Missy.