Like a cat with nine lives, the Petcetera pet-store chain has clawed back from the brink of demise to land safely on its feet.

The company is planning a nationwide grand opening as the New Petcetera at the end of the month, a chain that includes its Kamloops location.

But it wasn’t a simple road back from the pet cemetery for the new company.

With a struggling economy and an aggressive expansion program, the original Petcetera found itself carrying too much debt and was forced to go through a restructuring in March of this year.

When the restructuring failed, the company, which owned 45 stores across Canada, went into bankruptcy protection in June.

That led to a summer-long going-out-of-business sale carried out by a U.S. retail-liquidation company.

It was during this time that Dan Urbani, the sole owner of Canadian Petcetera Limited Partnership — the old Petcetera — stepped in.

Once the liquidation was complete, the former owner put a successful offer together to buy the 20 most profitable stores, which included the Hillside Drive location, along with the head office.

Since then, the New Petcetera has been quietly opening up 17 stores across the country on a sneak-peek basis.

“The company has the opportunity to start again,” Urbani, now president and CEO of New Petcetera Retail Limited, told KTW.

He’s confident this reincarnation will be successful, noting the company has signed new leases with its landlords and spent time with focus groups to become a better pet-specialty retailer.

With a new name comes some big changes.

Urbani said the new stores will offer plenty of new products, increase floor staff by 20 per cent and add more live animals, such as reptiles and ferrets, which are domestically bred.

Staff will also receive extensive training and be put through a certification process, while the company will focus on offering natural-premium pet foods.

The New Petcetera has also attempted to hire back many of its employees, who were laid off in June.

The Kamloops store is open, but won’t be completely ready until the Sept. 26 grand opening.

• Meanwhile, the ink has run dry on another Canadian company with a franchise in Kamloops.

Island Ink-Jet Inc. announced it will be closing its doors, including its location in the Sahali Centre Mall.

The company is blaming “declining monthly revenues” for the closure.

Island Ink-Jet, which started a decade ago in the Vancouver Island community of Courtenay, supplied ink to more than 260 locations worldwide.