Owner finds her missing cat after calling vet and hearing it meow

A FAMILY were reunited with their missing cat after eight months – after recognising his meow during a phone call to the vet’s.

Rachael Lawrence, 40, heard him mewing in the background when she rang to check on treatment for her other cat, Torvi.

She was told: ‘That’s just a stray we had brought in a week ago.’ But she rang back later to ask what the stray looked like.

Miss Lawrence, of Braintree, Essex, said: ‘It was just bugging me because I recognised the meow.’

She took photos of two-year-old Barnaby when she went to collect Torvi and said she ‘knew it was him’ at first sight. ‘I cried,’ she said. ‘I was howling. We hadn’t seen him for eight months.’

‘Look who I’ve found!’ she said in a video call to her three children. ‘They were so happy.’

Barnaby was ‘skinny and missing fur’ – but ‘more than happy to be picked up and cuddled’.

Miss Lawrence said he had been ‘chipped’ before he was lost, but ‘it clearly wasn’t done properly’.