His face was on 500 posters across Puyallup. Now, ‘the Benny campaign’ is over
A missing Puyallup cat has now reunited with his owners after eight long months.
Benny, a 21-month-old brown tabby, went missing on Dec. 4, 2024 in downtown Puyallup by Maplewood Elementary. Alex Lipston, Benny’s owner, said a harrowing 246 days passed before a call from her vet brought them back together.
“Benny’s a super cool cat and he always stays very close to home and he never strays far – so he’s never been gone for more than six or eight hours,” Lipston told The News Tribune. “I knew immediately when he didn’t show up that something had happened. I still don’t know what happened, but he disappeared, didn’t come home.”
‘As far and wide as possible’
That very day, Lipston started what she calls “the Benny campaign.”
“I hit the ground running, knocked on every neighbor’s door in five blocks in every direction,” Lipston said. “[It was] a lot of door knocking, a lot of flyers, and I think I printed out 500 posters and I put them in gallons of Ziploc bags and started stapling them on every telephone pole I could find. I left flyers on hundreds of porches.”
Word quickly spread, and Benny soon became a local legend. Lipston’s phone blew up with dozens of calls and texts with reported sightings.
“I bought a microchip scanner on Amazon so I could bring it with me to check a cat to be 100% sure it’s him. I even went to someone’s house at 1 in the morning,” Lipston said. “We did that for months and months – every time, you get your hopes up a bit, but it was never him.”
Lipston said that after the first few months, hope began to die down. The people around her told her that Benny was likely gone, and the City of Puyallup reached out to her at one point and told her she had to take some of her flyers down because there were too many.
“Everybody’s convinced that it’s never going to happen and you might as well give it up,” Lipston said. “There’s something inside of me that said, ‘Just keep going a little longer, you don’t know.’ Because I didn’t know – I had no evidence either way that he was alive or dead, so I decided to just not assume that he’s dead because I don’t know. And as long as he’s alive, I figured there’s still hope.”
‘The surprise of a lifetime’
On Aug. 7, a woman brought a cat to South Hill Vet to be spayed – and had no idea that she was about to solve one of Puyallup’s citywide mysteries.
“They all thought it was a female cat and sure enough, they scanned him for a microchip when he was under anesthesia,” Lipston said. “Then they realized, ‘This is not a female cat, this is actually a neutered cat, and this is Benny.’ And then I get a phone call, and I can’t believe it.”
Lipston said the woman claims she had Benny for a month before bringing him to the veterinarian.
“It was the surprise of a lifetime to get that call,” Lipston said. “I don’t know what anybody’s real intentions were – Benny’s a very, very cool cat, so I don’t blame anybody for wanting to keep him. This lady was very nice and she completely understood once the microchip was scanned and I got the phone call.”
When Benny first went missing, Lipston said she ordered a GPS collar to put on him when they found him again – and she finally got to put it on him this week.
“I got to open that box up when I got home,” Lipston said. “We’re trying not to helicopter parent him too much because I don’t want him to feel like a prisoner in the house.”
‘He’s kind of a celebrity at this point’
Lipston said Benny is happy, healthy – and, most importantly, reunited with his best friend: Lipston’s dog Jette.
“They’re best friends and he was by far the most excited to see her out of everybody,” Lipston said.
Since Benny’s return, neighbors have been coming to Lipston’s home to welcome him back.
“We live on a street with a lot of pedestrian traffic, with everybody walking by, asking to see Benny. He’s kind of a celebrity at this point in the neighborhood,” Lipston said. “Everybody is pretty stunned.”
Lipston said she is grateful for the microchip, because without it, she may have never seen Benny again.
“I am a diehard believer in microchips,” Lipston said. “Get your goldfish microchipped, get your ferret microchipped.”
And, ultimately, Lipston sees this as a story about perseverance.
“Never give up – not after a while, but never. Because everybody wants you to give up after a little while – after a month, or two months, or three months people start being like, ‘You better let it go,’” Lipston said. “That’s the message from Benny, is never give up.”
This story was originally published August 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
