An image of the orange tabby cat stuffed animal Mary Mellinger Kirk is offering a $50 reward for after accidentally donating to Savers in West Springfield. A vial of her father's ashes are inside.

Mary Mellinger Kirk is offering a $50 reward with proof of purchase for an orange tabby cat stuffed animal with a vial of her father’s ashes inside.

The Agawam woman posted to Facebook on March 11 that the Build-A-Bear cat was in one of the boxes she donated to Savers in West Springfield, but it was never meant to be donated.

Her father Paul Mellinger gave her son the stuffed cat when he was a baby and they had the vial of ashes added after he died in March 2018.

“(My son) is named after my father,” Mellinger Kirk said in a Facebook message.

She gave her son her maiden name because he was her father’s only grandson.

Paul Mellinger, pictured with his grandson, gave his grandson the orange tabby cat when he was a baby.

As of March 14, Mellinger Kirk said there haven’t been any updates.

“I have contacted the store and they state that have have gone through all the boxes that they have had and have not found it,” Mellinger Kirk wrote.

Initially she tried not to tell her son what happened because she knew it would upset him.

“Now that he has found out he calls me every day to ask if I’ve heard anything,” she said.

Even though he lives 30 minutes away and works full time, he’s gone to the store twice to look and calls Mellinger Kirk twice a day asking for updates, she said.

“He is very upset about this. And that makes me feel absolutely horrible,” Mellinger Kirk wrote. Her son cared for his grandfather for the last year of his life before he died.

She said she wants to tell the person that has it, “to you, you bought a stuffed animal, to me you bought memories between a grandfather and his only grandson.”

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