Family lost their cat 10 years ago and it’s just turned up absolutely fine

Charlie vanished from Lucy and Hannah Robertson’s home in 2016. They looked everywhere for him but felt he’d probably never come back. But then, 10 years later, he did.

For many families having a pet is like having another family member, so when anything happens to them it can be devastating. Sisters Lucy and Hannah Robertson were “heartbroken” in 2016 when their three-year-old cat Charlie went missing.

As an outdoor cat Charlie would spend the days roaming the streets where the family lived at the time, but one day in April 2016 – after recently moving to a new area in Abercarn – she never returned home.

Desperate to get their beloved pet back, Lucy, then 20, and Hannah, then 27, posted on social media asking if anyone had seen Charlie.

Thinking that she may have tried to get home to their old residence, the family spent months looking for Charlie and asking neighbours and people who lived in the area if they had seen her, but it never led to any leads.

Lucy, now 30, said: “When she went missing we searched for her for months and months and kept posting on Facebook but nobody came back to us. It was heartbreaking. We were scared that she had been knocked over or that she wasn’t around anymore.”

What the family did not expect was to get a call a decade later to say that Charlie had been found safe and well, and yet that’s exactly what happened.

On Wednesday, July 29, over 10 years after she went missing, the sisters got a call to say the “impossible” had happened – Charlie, the now 13-year-old tabby, had been found.

A veterinary practice in Abercarn called Lucy and Hannah to say that a cat had been brought in and traced via her microchip to the sisters who were shocked to find that it was in fact Charlie.

A resident in the area had taken Charlie into the vets after finding her living in nearby bushes and feeding the supposed stray for four weeks.

Reuniting with her beloved cat after 10 years, Lucy said: “She recognised us straight away which was lovely because we didn’t expect that. She doesn’t look much different at all, she looks exactly the same as the old photos we have of her. We’ve brought her back home to Newport where we live now.”

Hannah was also in “disbelief” when the vets told her the news and cried when she was reunited with Charlie.