Woman reunited with pet after six years

A woman has been reunited with her pet cat after he went missing for six years.

Bow left home when his owner Jill Watts was living on a narrowboat in Thorne in Doncaster.

Jill has since moved to the Derbyshire village of Renishaw, but she never gave up hope of getting Bow back, because he was microchipped.

Then, a few weeks ago, she got a call from a woman who had been feeding Bow after seeing him sleeping in a field.

“I couldn’t quite take it in, I was a bit shocked,” she said.

“We did wonder if he had got on someone’s boat, and the boat had sailed away, and he had got stranded somewhere.

“I’m just excited to have him back; I always believed he’d come back.”

Jill was overcome with emotion when she went to pick Bow up.

“I saw how well he looked, and he recognised me, and he knew his name,” she said.

“I was crying, it really made me sad, because I thought, ‘Where has he been for six years?”

Bow was found in Thorne, so he had not travelled far.

Instead of sailing away, Jill believes he had been looked after by factory workers.

“The lady said where she lived in Thorne there had been some factories behind her and the factories had closed down, so she seemed to think he was a factory cat,” said Jill.

“They’d been feeding him and probably making a fuss of him.”

Bow had a brother called Arra who also went missing while living on the narrowboat, and Jill hopes he will return too.

“As brothers, they were so close, they slept together all the time,” she said.

Jill adopted a new cat and also got a dog after Bow went missing, but fortunately he is getting on well with his new siblings.

“He can’t go out yet, I’ve got to keep him in another week because I don’t want him running off again,” she said.

“I don’t know whether he was lost, but he’s back after six years.

“I never gave up hope, and I won’t give up on Arra either.”