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Stray kitten missing after princess photoshoot

Posted at 5:12 AM, Jun 09, 2016
and last updated 2016-06-09 08:12:45-04

A stray kitten, now affectionately named Elsa, certainly got the princess treatment with her very own newborn photo shoot after a Missouri family found her in their garage right before Memorial Day.

“As soon as my daughter Emma, who is 4, got wind of there being a kitten in the garage, she was there day and night. She is feline-obsessed!,” Cassie Borcherding, of Mexico, Missouri, told ABC News. “I attempted to find the original owner via Facebook sales pages but had no luck. Elsa seemed a bit wild so I thought chances of finding the owner were slim. My daughter really wanted to keep her and of course it’s impossible to say no to my 4-year-old. She named the Kitten Elsa after her favorite Disney princess.”

Borcherding is a professional photographer, and apparently the creative gene runs in the family because her little daughter immediately requested a photo shoot with their new purr-fect kitty. “We often do photos of her dolls so the request wasn't as outlandish as it seems,” she said of her daughter’s wish. “We started with the swaddling, which wasn’t too hard. I just laid the kitten on my lap belly up and gave her a good tummy rub to relax her and started wrapping. She didn’t protest much and once I got her snug she was content and purred the entire time. We did three wraps. The last wrap being an Elsa-inspired look.”

The final touch was adding the magical Cinderella carriage prop.

“Fit for a princess of course,” Borcherding joked. “I set it up and got a couple shots of her sitting there posing for me, and then as she got playful, I took a few more to show her mischievous side.”

The entire photo shoot took about 30 minutes and the result was pure purr-fection.

Sadly however, Princess Elsa has since fled her kingdom. The kitten went missing last weekend, leaving the family devastated.

“Last Saturday I went shopping and picked her up a new collar. We even had her name and our address engraved on it,” said Borcherding. “Unfortunately, it was too big, and I would have to hunt down another collar. The one I had picked up was the smallest we could find so we went ahead and put it on her anyway.”

The kitten, which the family believes is about 10 weeks old, had gotten used to sleeping in the garage, but when they went to check on her the next morning, she was gone.

“We have had a few tips as far as what neighborhood she's been catting around in but haven’t had any luck,” Borcherding explained. “My husband and I and our 4-year-old Emma have spent every day posting on Facebook, hanging flyers and walking the neighborhood calling for her.

“We are still hopeful she’ll find her way home,” she added. “Many people have offered kittens to us, but we don’t want to give up on Elsa coming home so soon.”

The Borcherdings are trying to remain optimistic that she’ll return so they can all live happily ever after.