PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Some kitty math: How many lives did little tabby Gracie Mae use up when she crawled into her owner’s suitcase, went through an airport X-ray machine, got loaded onto a plane, thrown onto a baggage belt and mistakenly picked up by a stranger far from home?

“She’s got to be at four or five now,” Seth Levy said after his pet was returned Sunday by a stranger who returned to Fort Worth, Texas, with the wrong bag and Gracie inside to boot.

The last time Levy’s wife, Kelly, saw Gracie was before she took her husband to the airport. he 24-year-old went back to her house in Palm Beach Gardens late Friday to find the bottom step, where Gracie would usually be waiting, empty.

She tore the house apart looking for the cat.

Then she got a phone call.

“Hi, you’re not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas, and I accidentally picked up your husband’s luggage. And when I opened the luggage, a cat jumped out,” Kelly Levy quoted the caller saying.

Rob Carter said he made it home with the suitcase before realizing it wasn’t his – and there was a big surprise inside “I went to unpack and saw some of the clothes and saw it wasn’t my suitcase,” he said. “I was going to close it, and a kitten jumped out and ran under the bed. I screamed like a little girl”Carter said that he eventually was able to get the cat to come out from under the bed.

“In the morning, I got close enough to see its collar and the phone number on it,” he said. “So I called the number and got a hold of the crying wife of the traveler.”

The tabby made the 1,300-mile trip home on an $80 plane ticket. Carter said he considered keeping the cat.”We were going to name it Suitcase,” he said.

Farmhand rescues colleague from attacking crocodile

CANBERRA, Australia – A man rescued his colleague from the jaws of a crocodile in northern Australia but accidentally shot the unlucky co-worker in the process, police said Wednesday.

The two farmhands were collecting wild crocodile eggs on a riverbank Tuesday in Northern Territory when a crocodile snatched one of them, Jason Green, by the arm, the Northern Territory Police said in a statement.

“The male colleague shot at the crocodile, causing it to let go of the victim’s arm, but a further shot hit the victim in the upper right arm,” the statement said.

The two men had been collecting eggs to boost the crocodile population at their farm in the northern city of Darwin. Their employer sent a helicopter that flew Green to a Darwin hospital for surgery.

Police Commander Bob Harrison said Green’s injuries were not life-threatening.