Cat who ran off 11 years ago is finally reunited with owner. See the heartwarming video
A cat was missing for 11 years — then came a heartwarming reunion with his owner, a South Carolina video shows.
“No one had a dry eye because she loved that cat so much and was so heartbroken,” Charleston Animal Society spokesperson Kay Hyman told McClatchy News in an Aug. 19 phone interview.
Jenifer Ravenel, the cat’s owner, said she was emotional when she came to the shelter and saw Sam for the first time in years. When she affectionately called him “Sam Sam the Kitty Cat Man,” she believes he recognized her voice.
“We went to another room, and they brought him to me in a cage,” Ravenel told McClatchy News in a phone interview. “They let me pick him up and hold him and love on him and all. He immediately ducked his head and started purring so I could rub his ears.”
A video shared on Facebook shows the touching moments that unfolded more than a decade after Sam went missing. Ravenel said she had Sam for about two years before she got a new dog. One day in 2012 or 2013, the dog chased off Sam and he never returned.
“I searched and searched the woods,” Ravenel said in the video. “I asked everybody that lived around us, and nobody saw him.”
As time passed, the owner feared the worst. But recently, she got an unexpected call.
“I thought they were playing a joke,” Ravenel said. “But they said that they had my cat. I said, ‘There’s no way. He’s been gone 11 years.’”
The news was the real deal. The once-lost cat landed at the Charleston Animal Society after he was picked up by animal control in late July. He came to the shelter unkempt and had lost about half his body weight, according to Hyman.
Shelter workers called Ravenel after checking for a microchip, a device that stores pet owner’s contact information. It turns out, he wasn’t found far from his home and may have been living in a nearby feral cat colony.
“It floored me that he was that close and I couldn’t find him,” Ravenel told McClatchy News.
After the long-awaited reunion, Sam is being pampered and getting along better with the dog who once chased him off. He used to be an indoor-outdoor cat but now has “absolutely no interest” in spending time outside.
“Sam is very relaxed,” Ravenel said. “(All) he wants to do is sleep at the foot of my bed.”
Ravenel credits the microchip with helping her reconnect with her beloved cat, who’s now 13 or 14 years old.
“If they can find me after 11 years with a chip, there’s no reason you shouldn’t chip an animal,” the owner said.
This story was originally published August 21, 2024 at 12:34 PM with the headline "Cat who ran off 11 years ago is finally reunited with owner. See the heartwarming video."
