Missing cat Sooty returns to jubilant family after two years on the prowl

Reunited - Sooty with Hollie, 11, and younger sister Sarah, five.

A Sleaford family have been celebrating after miraculous return of their pet cat, Sooty, exactly two years to the day since he went missing from home.

Mum-of-three Cassie Shiels has shed tears of joy getting confirmation from the vet via a microchip scan that it is indeed her Sooty.

"I’m still pinching myself he is actually back here,” she said. “It is some really good news for our family as we have been through difficult times.”

Cassie explained that they had moved home from Redwood Avenue to St Giles Avenue over three years ago.

Then her husband Cliff died suddenly and unexpectedly from a blood clot in the heart which caused a heart attack on June 19, 2020.

Cassie said Cliff and Sooty were very close and says Sooty was visibly depressed for a while after Cliff died, but then almost exactly a year after Cliff died, Sooty left the house and did not come back.

"It was an emotional time, as he was the family pet,” said Cassie, “I can only think he went off, got a bit lost and picked up a scent and followed it.”

They trawled Facebook and made appeals to no avail, but then last weekend they spotted a post on another Facebook page asking if anyone was missing a black cat in the Southfields area, close to where they used to live, as it had been hanging around for some time, trying to get into houses and fighting with other cats.

Cassie Shiels with Hollie, 11, at the vets when they heard it was indeed Sooty.

Cassie did not dare believe it could be Sooty but contacted the woman who had posted the appeal. She recalls: “I asked her to call him Sooty and he responded! We jumped in the car and went round there and called to him and he came straight up to us, meowing and butting our legs.

"Some people on our old estate have been feeding him and trying to get near enough to catch him but he would run away. The woman we called had coaxed him into her patio area and kept him there with treats until we arrived.”

It was getting dark but Cassie and daughter Hollie, 11, wrestled Sooty into a cat crate and then took him to a vet the next morning to scan for his microchip.

"When they said it was him we burst into happy tears and I fell to my knees,” said Cassie. “It is the happiest I have felt in a long time. It has made me and my children very happy and Sooty is back to his normal self and cannot understand why we are not letting him out the house!”

Sooty is now eight years old with a few more grey hairs and a few war wounds to his ears, and has taken up residence again in the rear bedroom as if nothing has happened, despite managing to navigate across town, several busy roads and a railway line to his old stomping ground and survive for two years.

To have him back on the anniversary of Cliff’s death is special too, Cassie said. But she also saw it as an important lesson to owners to get their cats microchipped to be in with a chance of finding them again.