Feline inadvertently shipped from Dallas to Chicago suburb

A Woodstock chiropractor was initially miffed this week when he opened a box of supplies shipped from Texas and noticed tufts of fur. Then he spotted the cat, which had hitched a ride from Dallas. "My first reaction was, I didn't know what kind of animal he was, so I closed the box back up," said Brett St. Aubin, clinic director at Chiro One Wellness Center of Woodstock.

The stowaway's collar identified him as Cody Bennett, 2, a black and white cat who disappeared Monday from the Chiro Design Group. Cody jumped unnoticed into the roughly 2-by-3-foot box as it was being packed, said Marie Webster, whose daughter owns the cat.

"She taped it up, put the label on it and off he went" via UPS, said Webster.

Making the best of it, the cat burrowed deeply into a bundle of foam products designed for the neck.

When St. Aubin called Webster on Wednesday to report Cody's whereabouts, her first thought was that he had found him wandering nearby in Dallas. "I didn't know he was in a suburb of Chicago," Webster exclaimed.

Cody spent the night at a veterinarian's office and made the trip home Thursday, this time by crate. He arrived at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport about 3:30 p.m., looking a bit thin, Webster said.

The cat won't be forgotten any time soon at the Woodstock chiropractic clinic. "We made him patient of the month," St. Aubin said.