A five-year odyssey for a cat named Dexter seems to have finally come to an end, after a long, covert stay at a prison was interrupted by his arrival onboard an offshore oil rig, which finally resulted in a call to animal services.

The cat was a regular "well-loved" hangabout at Her Majesty's Prison Grampian in Peterhead, Scotland, where staff used to "fuss over" him and even gave him the nickname One-eyed Joe.

Then a most unexplainable thing happened: One-eyed Joe somehow ended up in a shipping container a mile-and-a-half away at the town's port, before being shipped onto an offshore oil rig, where workers "ran away frightened" after the all-black cat jumped out of the container.

After filling out an incident card, (which must have been humorous) the staff aboard the rig took to Joe most kindly, who was now quite comfortable with living alongside the rig workers. According to The National, he was "spoiled rotten" during his time there.

Eventually though, someone called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Aberdeen, who retrieved Joe after the cat had been flown off the rig on a helicopter—a remarkable feat considering how hard it is normally just to get a cat into a carrier.

"We were alerted to an incident of a cat being found in a shipping container offshore," Aimee Findlay, a Scottish SPCA animal rescue officer, said in a statement. "We've no idea how the cat ended up there, but attended the heliport to collect him."

One-eyed Joe was microchipped, and upon scanning the staff learned his name was actually Dexter, and that his owner had lost the cat five years ago.

"We are so glad that he was well looked after for the time he was missing but we're even more delighted to be able to reunite him with his original owner, thanks to his microchip being up to date," Findlay said.

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