Family finally reunited with missing cat...after more than a DECADE

Her beloved moggy ran off just months before Susan Manson left her island home in Scotland in 2011.

So when a stray cat resembling Mona was found last week, the 34-year-old, who is back living in Lerwick, Shetland, dismissed any notion it might be her much-loved pet.

After spotting the picture of the moggie sheltering under bins on a local missing pets Facebook group, Ms Manson pushed the idea to the back of her mind, not thinking it could be real.

But, as she compared its markings to old photographs of Mona, her ‘denial’ waned and she began to realise it really could be her long-lost pet - last seen 13 years ago.

She began searching the animal’s old ‘hang outs’ and eventually found her under the bins where she was had been pictured - not far from where she used to live all those years ago.

They were finally reunited after Ms Manson borrowed a humane trap from the Scottish SSPCA to catch her.

Ms Manson, who relocated to England after Mona vanished, admitted she had assumed the cat had died, but was now ‘buzzing’ to have her back in her life.

She said: ‘I’m just absolutely over the moon.

‘It’s a bit surreal to be fair. When the picture first came up I didn’t say anything at first, because I thought “surely not”.

‘I’m still in disbelief that this has even happened. You hear of cats returning after two or three years but 13 years is quite a long time.’

As a precaution Mona was taken to the local vets to be checked out and apart from a touch of suspected arthritis, the 16-year-old cat appears to be doing well.

Ms Manson has now created a temporary enclosure under her stairs to allow the animal to gradually get used to her new surroundings.

It remains a mystery where she has been living all these years, but her owner said ‘somebody must have been feeding her, because she was still quite friendly’.