My first cat did that.
When I was 3 we lived in faculty housing at UBC in Vancouver, BC. Dogs were not allowed, but cats were. We went to the local shelter and two kittens, which we named Jack (russian blue) and Jill (ginger). Jack was nominally my younger sister’s, and Jill was nominally mine.
It turned out they were both males, but we didn’t change the names. They didn’t particularly like being two males in the same house, and Jill would often disappear for 3 or 4 days at a time.
When I was 5 we were preparing to move to the east coast of the US (my father decided he didn’t like teaching, and got a job at IBM Research). We moved by taking a weeks long camping trip across the continent. So the cats needed to be fixed, and then they would need to be boarded while we were moving, and then flown to New York once we had arrived.
We carefully kept Jill inside, so he would be there on the day of the vet appointment.
After a few days a grad student couple put up notices about their lost cat, and went door to door around the campus housing looking for him. It turned out they thought Jill was THEIR cat. Everyone was very upset. Eventually my parents convinced me that we should let Jill make the choice. If he was with us the day we took Jack to the boarding kennel, Jill would go too, and join us in New York. If he wasn’t with us that day, he would stay with the grad student couple.
He stayed in Vancouver. But I have always chosen ginger cats when I have a choice.
Postscript-
After we had arrived in New York, and moved into our new house, we got notice that Jack had arrived, and we went to the cargo section of the airport (I think it was Idlewild) to pick him up. Even though we had all the appropriate paperwork, the attendant insisted that he had no such package, and, in particular, he didn’t have ANY cats in transit. They were talking quite loudly, when they were interrupted by a loud MEOW. Jack WAS there, and he meowed when he heard my father’s voice.
