But at 9 months old, Cheech was hit by a car and had to have his front left leg amputated.<\/p>\n
Despite the trauma, he made a recovery and adapted quickly to having three legs.<\/p>\n
Baker then moved into a home where she couldn\u2019t keep Cheech and he temporarily moved in with a friend.<\/p>\n
When Baker did move into her own place, Cheech joined her \u2013 but he kept going missing as the area was busy with more cats to reckon with.<\/p>\n
Over the next two years, Cheech would disappear for periods of time only to be spotted around town and returned home.<\/p>\n
Cheech the three-legged cat.<\/p>\n
But in 2020, Cheech hit the road and didn\u2019t come back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so heartbreaking because that was my daughter\u2019s best friend,\u201d Baker said.<\/p>\n
Baker searched the streets, followed lost pet pages and held on to hope \u2013 even after Cyclone Gabrielle devastated the region.<\/p>\n
She feared the worst but \u201cI was always hopeful\u201d.<\/p>\n
Baker believed someone was feeding him, assuming he was a stray.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know everyone wants to love them and feed all the stray cats, but it really needs to stop. That\u2019s the reason cats don\u2019t come home,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Five years later, Baker received a message from a friend to say there was a three-legged cat that looked like Cheech at the Napier SPCA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t sure if it was going to be him because I thought there\u2019s no way my cat with three legs has survived this bloody long,\u201d Baker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when I turned up, his purr, he was so excited to see me and he was trying to charge down the little cat cage door to try and get out to give me cuddles, and it was so beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baker\u2019s daughter was happy when Cheech returned and now sleeps with him in her bed every night.<\/p>\n
Baker called the team at the Napier SPCA amazing and said they gave her vouchers to get Cheech microchipped to help locate him in case of any further adventures.<\/p>\n
However, Cheech\u2019s escape routes from home have been blocked off and he is enjoying his time inside once again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But at 9 months old, Cheech was hit by a car and had to have his front left…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,5831,1975,1561,8688,15038,1342,1874,71,1976,440,5836,6501,111,43,139,69,90,2738,8145,15041,15039,223,15040,810,1530],"class_list":["post-12685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-alive","tag-at","tag-bay","tag-cat","tag-cheech","tag-five","tag-found","tag-from","tag-hawkes","tag-local","tag-lost","tag-missing","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-owner","tag-run","tag-shown","tag-spca","tag-the","tag-threelegged","tag-up","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}