When the beloved resident cat of a Virginia Lowe's disappeared, staff pulled out all the stops to find her

Richmond, Virginia — At a Lowe's in Richmond, Virginia, store manager Mike Sida has always had a favorite employee: Francine the cat.

"She wasn't quite as friendly in the very beginning," Sida told CBS News. "But after a little while, she found her way into a lot of people's hearts, I guess you could say."

Cats can do that. For nearly a decade, this former stray was a constant presence in the garden department. She'd become a local celebrity. Then one day, a few months ago, Francine vanished.

"I just had a gut feeling that she was gone," said Wayne Schneider, a Lowe's employee and Francine's primary caretaker.

Schneider figured Francine must have wandered onto a freight truck bound for a massive Lowe's distribution center in Statesville, North Carolina, about 85 miles away. If so, she