But, as we so often like to point out, real life requires even more suspension of disbelief than any Pixar movie.

Where would the kids' movie industry be without the "lost pets try to find their way home" genre? But, of course, the only reason the grossly unlikely plots of Homeward Bound and Finding Nemo could occur is because the animals in those movies have human intelligence, and because little kids won't buy tickets to watch movies about lost animals getting run over on the highway.

6 Dixie the Cat Returns Home After Nine Years

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Dixie the ginger cat had already lived a long and happy life by 1999, when she turned 15, which is about 76 in cat years. Like all 76-year-olds, Dixie was quite content just sitting around eating dry food and mewling at neighborhood children all day, until one day she inexplicably disappeared, which is also something that geriatrics tend to do from time to time.

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"If anyone needs me, I'll be catching rats over at the Sizzler."

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As the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, Dixie's owner, Gilly Delaney, came to accept the sad truth. Her elderly kitty was certainly clawing ribbons out of God's couch by now.

So of course Mrs. Delaney was overjoyed when an RSPCA officer found her cat alive and well and delivered her home safe again. Cool story, right? No? Well, we forgot to mention that they found the cat nine years later.

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"I don't remember a goddamned thing. Catnip's a helluva drug."

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Yep, that means she lived in the wild until she was 24. That number doesn't even appear on the cat/human age chart -- in our years, it's like 130 or something. To put that into perspective, the life expectancy of cats is around 13 years, so Dixie was already on borrowed time when she ran away. And it's not like living on the streets gives cats magical rejuvenating powers -- wild cats only typically live to around 8. That means Dixie lived longer than your typical house cat and your typical feral cat combined.

And then there's the fact that even young, healthy cats tend to gravitate toward oncoming cars like they're made of electromagnets, so Dixie's survival story would already have been amazing even if she had only been a year old when she ran away. Once she got back, her owners claimed that her personality hadn't changed a bit, which is what you'd expect from a cat that is secretly a transfigured wizard.