Cats can travel a long way and they are the ultimate survivalists. Once upon a time my parents owned a farm about sixty miles as the crow flies from our home place and my father relocated a tomcat to it. It was surrounded by pasture land back in those days and they were over run with pack rats and rabbits so the cat should have had an easy life. The cat evidently didn't care for the lonely life and it took him about five months but he showed up at the back door one morning and other than being a little skinny appeared none the worse for wear. The ultimate "cat came back" episode that I'm acquainted with. I have no idea how an animal can go for a truck ride that involved about 75 miles and find it's way back to where it started.
About 30 years ago a neighbor in the Texas Panhandle had given his little girl a female siamese kitten. We thought nuthin about it other than it started crappin in our flower beds when it was grown.
We had a glassed in front porch, and one day the cat ran in, and jumped into Linda's lap. As I turned around it proceeded to attempt to claw Linda's eyes out, and did scratch her face up pretty bad.
I caught the cat, threw it into my pickup, and started driving. Probably about 30 miles later I got ou with my shotgun in the middle of nowhere, but because it belonged to my neighbors little girl I couldn't shoot it, and just let it go.
About 13 months later, I looked out the front door, and there it was back.
The next ride it went on, it didn't come back.