‘Oh my god Pipi! We haven’t seen you for eight years’

A Coromandel Peninsula family are reeling after their pet cat turned up eight years after going missing.

Pipi, a grey shorthair from the beach town of Whiritoa, had been rehomed in Parakiwai Valley in 2014 near Whangamata. After spending only two nights at his new residence, he went missing.

Lisa Grove and her family had all but given up hope when she received the call from the vet while at work.

“The vet said, ‘Did you lose a cat? He’s just been found today.’ I went back to work and I couldn’t think, I just couldn’t function. I had to ring them back to ask ‘Have I got this wrong?’ ”

Pipi had been brought to the vet after being found back in his hometown, Whiritoa. He had spent eight weeks locked in a shed at a bach, with only a small water source to sustain him.

He had made the journey from Parakiwai Valley to Whiritoa, about 16km by road, with many streams and forests in between.

Lisa called her daughter at school to tell her the news. Caitlin, who was only 6 at the time of Pipi’s disappearance, had always been “hung up” on not knowing his fate.

“I asked her if she was sitting down. In the last eight years we’ve never got over it. We always talk about Pipi.”

When Grove and her daughter arrived at the vet, Pipi recognised the pair immediately.

“I said to him, ‘Oh my god, Pipi! We haven’t seen you for eight years!’

“He started to meow and cuddle around our legs.”

Looking back, Lisa said their family instantly knew rehoming Pipi was “a terrible, terrible mistake”.

The family were expecting a change in circumstances that would mean they could no longer keep their pet, however, it did not eventuate.

After hearing the news of his escape in 2014, Lisa and her daughter never gave up hope of finding him.

“We’ve always driven slowly through the area where he got lost and called out the window looking for him.”

Lisa, although relieved at his dramatic re-entrance into their lives, is frustrated that no one during that time had checked the microchip which would have let the family know their pet was still alive.

“The vet was confident that someone had been looking after him at some point while he was gone, he just wasn’t in that bad a nick — although, he was always a really good hunter so could’ve survived on his own.

“They could have eased my suffering . . . it’s not me really, it’s my child. She really had a big hang-up about him getting lost after we rehomed him.”

Grove wants others to be diligent when it comes to checking microchips. Even kittens and cats that are given to you should be double-checked for a microchip, so that owners can keep track of their former pets’ lives.

“Who knows, we may have said you can keep him . . . but they never gave us that opportunity.”

Pipi, now 12, will live out his sunset years “as a king”.

He will share his kingdom with two other rescue cats, Smudgee, and Shadow who is fully blind.

Pipi and Caitlin, who were born on the same day, have even got to share a birthday together since being reunited.

“I’m so loving having him back home. It’s so great . . . He has a bed but he likes sleeping on top of the washing machine under the dryer where it’s warm.”