Owner struggles to solve Rubiks' cruise

MAARTEN HOLL/The Dominion Post

COMPLEX CAT: Felicity Donaldson has Rubiks on home detention after his two-week and 20-kilometre walk.

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Rubiks' cruise is proving a mind-bender.

When the two-year-old black cat set out from his Mt Cook home in Wellington two weeks ago, it might have been just another of his local "sojourns". Instead, he spent two weeks making his way 20 kilometres north to the Hutt Valley, where he eventually strolled in to the Lower Hutt police station on Tuesday morning.

"I can't see him walking along the motorway that far, but who knows?" owner Felicity Donaldson said yesterday.

"Maybe he got into someone's van and that's how he got out there. He's really friendly."

Friendly, but feisty.

"He follows people along the road, he's all friendly then he attacks them."

But Rubiks - named after the Rubik's Cube puzzle because his personality was "really complex" - was savvy enough to have worked out the rules of the road, Ms Donaldson said.

She had watched him walk across a pedestrian crossing on John St in Mt Cook before.

And he is not new to cross-country adventure.

He has been picked up from Kilbirnie after a six-week hiatus, outside the Malaysian high commission in Brooklyn and near Wellington Zoo in Newtown.

Ms Donaldson said she no longer worried so much about her "boomerang" cat, but there was still a punishment when he took off for so long.

"He's on home detention now. I'll see how long that lasts."

An SPCA microchip implanted in Rubiks' neck when he was a kitten helped police and the SPCA reunite him with Ms Donaldson.