In August, Dylan LaPort and Jasmine Johnson received every pet sitter’s worst message: a neighbor thought one of the cats they were watching had gotten outside.
“No way,” LaPort told The Dodo. “There’s just no way that happened. We were super careful.”
The couple was only two days into a month-long pet-sitting job at a family friend’s home in upstate New York. They were responsible for four cats — including Nemo, a long-haired black cat with striking yellow eyes.
They searched the house from top to bottom. Closets. Under beds. Behind furniture. Nemo was nowhere to be found.
“At that point we were like, ‘OK… he must have actually gotten out somehow,’” LaPort said.
With help from neighbors and friends, they began searching the area. About two hours later, LaPort spotted a fluffy black cat several houses down that looked exactly like Nemo.
A neighbor caught the cat and handed him over. Relieved, LaPort sent a photo to Nemo’s owner, who confirmed it was him.
Problem solved. Or so they thought.
Over the next week, something felt… off.
Nemo, usually shy and not a fan of being touched, suddenly became affectionate. He cuddled. He followed them around. He slept with them every night.
Still, the couple chalked it up to a change of heart after his big adventure.
Then one night around 2 a.m., Johnson got up for a glass of water — and froze.
Five cats were staring at her.
Two of them were identical.
Same shaggy black fur. Same yellow eyes. Sitting side by side in total silence.
Johnson grabbed her phone and started recording, her confusion growing by the second. That’s when the horrifying realization hit:
One of these cats was not Nemo.
Which meant they hadn’t rescued Nemo at all — they’d accidentally kidnapped someone else’s cat.
LaPort posted the video to Facebook with the caption, “The moment we found out we stole someone’s cat.” It quickly made the rounds online — until it reached Kelly Aleschus, the very neighbor who’d helped catch the cat.
She had been missing her own black cat, Sidney, all week.
Sidney is a 13-year-old indoor cat who looks exactly like Nemo. Aleschus had spent days worried sick, convinced something terrible had happened.
“I looked at the video and thought, ‘Sidney’s alive,’” she told The Dodo. “I couldn’t believe it. I was so relieved.”
In hindsight, the moment she handed the cat over finally made sense.
“The worst part is, after I gave them the cat, I thought, ‘Wow, you really look like Sidney,’” she said.
The real mystery was how the mix-up lasted an entire week.
The pet sitters now believe they spent most of that time with Sidney — who happily joined them in bed every night.
“He’s got quite the personality,” Aleschus said. “He acts like a kitten.”
Meanwhile, the real Nemo was likely doing what he does best: hiding.
“He only comes out when I’m home alone,” Nemo’s mom, Rachael Jones, said. “Once he hid inside my bed frame. There was a hole in the box spring, and I could feel something moving around in there.”
Somehow, all five cats peacefully coexisted without incident, and Sidney blended in without raising any red flags.
Once the mix-up was solved, Sidney returned home, the pet-sitting job wrapped up, and life went back to normal.
Well… mostly.
A few weeks later, Nemo gave Jones another scare when he didn’t come running for dinner. She eventually found him the next morning, lounging on the upstairs porch.
“I was like, ‘I already checked there,’” she said. “What is happening?”
With Nemo, apparently, you never really know.
