Holly the cat has become an internet sensation, mystified animal experts [and used up an unknown number of her nine lives] by trekking 200 miles home after disappearing on a family road trip eight weeks earlier.

   Exhausted and emaciated, barely able to stand and too weak to miaow, the cat appeared from nowhere on New Year's Eve in the back garden of a Florida family home.

  For six days, Barb Mazzola and her children put out food and milk for the nervous animal, eventually coaxing her inside their house in West Palm Beach.

  They fell in love with the cat, a tortoiseshell with distinctive black, brown and ginger patterning. But when Mrs Mazzola took it to the vet, she reluctantly asked if the cat had an implanted microchip that would identify its original owners.

  She did. And it turned out her name was Holly and that her owners Jacob and Bonnie Richter lived just a mile away.

  But what was truly remarkable was that they had lost Holly two months earlier when she bolted out of their mobile home on a trip to Daytona Beach – 200 miles north along Florida's Atlantic coast.

  How Holly, a house cat who rarely ventured outside, managed to make it to back to her hometown from unknown terrain so far away has baffled animal behaviourists.

  It has also turned her into an internet sensation among feline aficionados and spawned countless theories about how sights, sounds and smells, an inner compass or some memories of the drive north may have guided her homeward odyssey.

  "It is a complete mystery," said Marc Bekoff, a University of Colorado professor who specialises in animal behaviour. "She may have had some basic sense of direction and then got clues from sights or sounds as she got closer, but the truth is that we have no idea how she got home."

  What seems certain, judging from the state of its paws, is that it walked home by road and pavement, rather than somehow hitching a lift or going cross-country. Its back feet, the ones that cat use to propel themselves, were swollen, rubbed and raw and the claws were worn down to stubs.

  “神猫”霍莉近日走红网络，也令动物学家大惑不解。它在一次家庭驾车游中走失，历时八周徒步200英里返回家中，此时已筋疲力尽。

  新年前夜，在佛罗里达一户家庭的后院出现一只猫，它看起来筋疲力尽，神情憔悴，勉强站立着，连叫声都发不出来了。

  六天来，巴伯·马佐拉和她的孩子们一直给这只紧张兮兮的小猫喂食物与牛奶，最后又把它带到位于西棕榈滩的家中。

  他们对这只小猫宠爱有加，它的毛色为黄褐黑白相间，黑、棕、姜黄三色相间的图案十分显眼。不过，当抱着它去兽医那里时，马佐拉夫人不很心甘情愿地问起这只猫身上是否植入了芯片，以便其主人辨识。

  她还是问了。结果得知这只猫名叫霍莉，它的主人雅各布·里克特和邦妮·里克特就住在一英里外。

  不过，真正神奇的是，两个月前，在随主人全家乘房车去德托纳比奇的行程中，霍莉跳出了车子，从此音讯全无。德托纳比奇位于佛罗里达的大西洋沿岸以北200英里处。

  名叫霍莉的这只家猫从未独自外出过，它是如何从未知的某地徒行回家的呢？对此，动物行为学家也颇为费解。

  霍莉也由此在养猫爱好者中蹿红，并在网上走红。人们开始展开大讨论，探讨视觉、听觉、味觉、内置指南针、或北上行程中的一些记忆片段如何指引着霍莉完成返家的长途跋涉。

  “这完全让人费解”，科罗拉多大学教授、动物行为研究专家马克·贝科夫说道。“她可能有一定的方向感，于是越往前走，就会通过视觉或听觉找到一些线索。不过，说实话，我们不知道它是如何回家的。”

  从猫爪的情况来看，有一点似乎是可以肯定的，即它确实是沿公路和人行道徒步回来的，而不是搭顺风车或穿越野地。它的后脚掌（猫用来推进身体运动）肿胀起来，磨破了皮，爪子磨得只剩一小段了。