My cat's just returned home... after 14 years

Diane Greig, 41, thought she would never see her cat Misty again. She had brought the tabby as a kitten, along with his brother Harry, in 1998.

In 2002, Misty did his usual disappearing act and wandered off, but that time, never returned home.

Despite extensive searches around Harrogate, Misty could not be traced and the family assumed he was gone.

But after 14 years, Ms Grieg received an unexpected call from a vet in Keighley, more than 25 miles away.

She said: “I kept updating my phone details in the hope someone would find him but when we moved house about six years later, I did think we would never see him again.

“I was absolutely shocked when I got the message from the vet. To hear he was alive after all these years was amazing and I cried when I first saw him again.”

Misty, now a stray, had been begging for food at a cafe and staff handed him in to the vet’s hospital.

The vets were astounded when they scanned his chip, and discovered where Misty’s original home was.

No-one knows where the cat had been spending his time in the intervening 14 years.

Ms Grieg, who works in a bakery, said: “I would love to know where he has been all this time and if anyone had taken him in. It would be amazing if Misty could talk and tell us about his adventures.

“He’s very elderly now so we’re having to make up for lost time but it’s just so incredible to have him back after all these years.”

Ms Grieg’s mother Debra, who works for a dog rescue charity and went along with her daughter to collect the cat, said: “Misty is very smelly and matted so he has obviously been a stray for a while, but someone must have been looking after him for some time for him to have survived this long.

“We don’t know what’s happened to that person for him to become a stray again. We thought, ‘Would it be better to find them?’”

Diane added: “We lived on Beech Grove and Misty would sit on the fences round the corner so the kids could stroke her on their way back from school. He did that every day until one day he just vanished.”

Misty returned to a very different family to the one he left behind, with Ms Grieg’s five-year-old son Caileb now 19 and three new pets in the house, but the 18-year-old has made himself right at home.

His brother Harry was hit by a car and died around a year after Misty left.

Ms Grieg said: “He wasn’t fazed by anything, even with our two new cats and our dog, I really thought they would go for each other but he’s actually become best friends with the dog.”