Cats have been known to travel long distances with their person and sometimes on their own. I know a couple who take their cat on all of their vacations—even when they spend an extended holiday in Europe. Many people today travel in their RV with their cats. But cats have also been known to hitch a ride with a long-haul driver, deliveryman, in cars, trailers, etc. Some cats find their way back home and others discover new living situations either with a kind human 
or in a colony.
In 1984, a cat named Hamlet was being transported in the belly of an airliner to Canada when he escaped from his carrier. They couldn’t find that cat anywhere, and finally gave up the search. After seven weeks they found the Hamlet still on the plane hiding behind a panel. They figured that by then he had flown over 600,000 miles. A record, for sure.
Here’s a site with several stories of cats finding their way home even sometimes to a new home where they’d never been. http://www.petmedsonline.org/record-distances-travelled-by-lost-cats.html
The queen of all traveling cats has been crowned. It’s Sugar, a 
part Persian cat who traveled 1,500 miles to join her family in a home she had never visited. It took her fourteen months, but she made it. The reason they left her behind with a neighbor was because she had a hip deformity and it was difficult for her to travel by car. So she traveled by foot. What a cat!
A cat named Rusty is thought to hold the record for the fastest traveling. They suspect he used whatever transportation was available. But how did he know they were going in the right direction? This trip occurred in 1949. Rusty traveled 950 miles from Boston to Chicago in eighty-three days.
Fascinating. I could read these stories all day long.
