WATCH Grieving young girl from Woking reunited with cat 9 months after he went missing
It has been a tough year for Katya who lost her father to cancer in the summer
A cat missing for nine months and presumed dead is reunited with a grieving young girl in Woking and her reaction is priceless.
After nine months of searching for her beloved cat, 10-year-old Katya had reluctantly accepted that she would not see Timmy again.
The family have been going through a tough time after Katya's father, Perry passed away from cancer earlier in the year.
Back in January Katya's family moved from Surrey to West End, Woking.
Timmy was kept inside for a few weeks but on the second time he was let out in his new neighbourhood he did not come home.
The family searched for the missing feline and posted on social media but no sightings were reported.
After being missing for nine months, mum Svitlana felt the time had come to accept that Timmy was gone for ever and she would need to help her daughter heal.
The process started with Svitlana getting rid of Timmy’s toys and bedding.
Within a few days she would get a miracle phone call.
Incredibly, Timmy had been found safe and well and would be coming home, thanks to him being microchipped.
Pauline Welch, Welfare Officer for Cats Protection’s Woking and District Branch, said: “We had a report from a lady who had been feeding a suspected stray cat for a couple of months.
"I went round and scanned him for a microchip, which he had thankfully.
"While there I looked up the number on our system and saw that it had been registered to an address in Chertsey.
"The lady who answered was indeed missing her cat Timmy and was over the moon that he’d been found.
"Her daughter had been devastated when he went missing and had asked her mum that very morning if she’d ever see him again.
"It’s a heart wrenching story with a happy ending. It certainly brought a few tears to our eyes, that’s for sure.”
Relieved mum Svitlana was bowled over when she took the call:
“I had just taken Katya to school when I received a totally unexpected call from Cats Protection.
"I had given up hope of ever receiving such a call. Timmy was coming home. It was almost unbelievable.
“I knew that Katya would be overjoyed to see Timmy.
"That was when I hit on the idea of filming that special moment, to capture Katya’s reaction to finding Timmy hiding on her bed.
“We’ve had it hard this year, like so many people. It has been hard to see any end to it. And then I had a miracle call from Cats Protection. It really brought some light back into our world.
“If it wasn’t for that microchip, we wouldn’t have Timmy home with us now. He won’t leave Katya’s side and she is besotted with him.
"He came back to us two days before my birthday; that really was the best present I could have hoped for this year.”
According to Cats Protection’s CATS report 2020 over a quarter (26%) of owned cats in the UK are not chipped.
The charity is campaigning to change this by making it a legal requirement for cats to be microchipped, as it is for dogs.