A missing cat was reunited with his owner after being lost for seven years.
A missing cat from New Hampshire was reunited with his owner just in time for Christmas 2020 after being lost for the past seven years in a touching Christmas miracle that was earlier reported on by People Magazine.
Benny was adopted by Nancy Bryant in 2011 after her friend’s daughter moved and had to leave him behind.
The long-haired black cat was about five years old then, and lived happily with Nancy for the next several years, particularly enjoying the nearby woods, where he would often roam for a day or two in the way that male cats often do.
Except that one day he never came back home.
“We kept searching the woods – we just never found him,” Bryant told People. “I finally figured some animal just got ahold of him.”
That seems like a very reasonable assumption, though that happens too often with pets in rural areas.
One way or another, Benny survived the next seven years, until someone found him a couple weeks ago and took him into the local vet’s office, who in turn took him to the New Hampshire SPCA in Stratham, a town of about 7,000 in the southeastern part of the state, located an hour north of Boston, Massachusetts.
The SPCA staff found a microchip with his previous owner’s information on it, and they contacted Nancy.
“That was pretty crazy and unheard of,” Kelly Marinel, Manager of Animal Care at NHSPCA Stratham, told People. “The fact that we were able to reunite him, and the fact that it was from so long ago was pretty amazing.”
Benny and Nancy were reunited on December 8, and he was subsequently renamed St Nick to mark the occasion of the Christmas miracle.
While cat years don’t have an accurate translation that we’re aware of, in dog year reckoning 14 years would equal to around 84 years old. Because of that, Benny/St Nick is now deaf and has vision problems, as well as being a diabetic, and he was greatly malnurished at the time of his rescue.
Despite all these common problems of age, Bryant says that he has remained his playful, intelligent self, preferring to be the center of attention whenever possible. In fact, Benny/St Nick will swat the cards away when she and her husband attempt to play card games when he’s nearby.
While it would vary on your veterinarian’s practice and services provided, Petfinder estimates the average cost of microchipping your cat or dog at around $45, which is a one-time fee that usually includes uploading their information into a database in case he or she ever gets lost.
Microchips will not provide a pet’s location, as they are not GPS devices, but they do serve as an ID that will last for a lifetime.
Dogs, especially, should also wear their collar and ID tag in addition to being microchipped, just in case something bad happens.