A family has had an emotional reunion with their cat six years after it left the house.
Jo and Ade Haigh had all but given up on their black and white pet, Charlie, who was nine when he left the house in Fareham, Hampshire, in 2006.
However, Mrs Haigh spotted the cat when she was out walking and was able to verify that it was Charlie thanks to a microchip that had been fitted to him.
When he first went missing the family put up 'lost' posters and contacted nearby vets' surgeries, but to no avail.
But then Mrs Haigh spotted the family pet and took him to an animal shelter where she works to carry out tests on his microchip.
The tiny electronic identification tag confirmed this was her Charlie, who she had cared for since he was seven weeks old.
The couple have moved more than two miles away since Charlie vanished and Mrs Haigh was only back in Stubbington to view a property for her mother.
She said: 'My mum, sister and I were looking at a place close to the house Ade and I lived in when Charlie went missing.
'If it wasn’t for the bungalow my mum, sister and I were looking at, we wouldn’t have been around there.
'When we saw this cat on a wall outside a house I was immediately 99.9 per cent sure it was Charlie.
'He was a lot skinnier but came straight over to me and responded to his name.
'We went and spoke to the man who lived there and he told me he had been feeding Charlie for about two and a half years.
'I’m over the moon to have him back. We shed a few tears when the microchip test worked.'
Mrs Haigh, a receptionist, says she’s so happy to have Charlie, now 16, back that she’s scared to let him out of the house.
She added: 'I was shocked to start with that I had even come across him.
'We had always been left wondering what had happened to him.
source: dailymail
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