Watch as cat is joyfully reunited with owner after going missing for 8 years in Milton Keynes

Much-loved Lola caused a city-wide search after strayed out of the door of her Bletchley home in 2018.

Her distraught owner had rescued her as a very young cat who had endured a horrible start in life and the pair had formed a close bond.

She had been one of four adult cats and six kittens found dumped in a box by the side of the canal in Milton Keynes in a terrible state and the whole lot were taken in by the city’s Travis Cat Rescue, a small but hard-working group of volunteers.

After being nursed back to health, neutered and microchipped, Lola was found the perfect home in Bletchley Park and settled in beautifully. But then disaster struck…

"The owner rang to say Lola had gone missing. She was devastated and so were we,” said Travis Cat Rescue founder June Pallett.

"We tried everything to find her. We set a trap and put posters up, but there were no sightings at all.”

Then June was called out to a cat that had been killed on the road in Bletchley. By the time she arrived, the body had gone and she assumed the council had collected it and not checked the microchip before disposal.

"It was in the area that Lola lived and it was too much of a coincidence. Sadly, I had to assumer that cat was Lola and break the news to her owner,” she said.

Over the years, June never forgot Lola. “I would often think about her and feel sad that we didn’t manage to find her in time,” she said.

Then, last week, out of the blue, the owner had a call she thought she would never receive. A friendly tabby had been picked up as a stray, scanned for a micorchip and it was Lola!

"We couldn’t believe it!” said June. “After all these years of thinking she was dead, there she was. And someone had obviously been look

ing after her because she seemed healthy and well-fed."

Lola immediately recognised her old owner and both are thrilled to be together again.

What happened to her over the past eight years remains a mystery and it is assumed someone took her in as their own as fed her – without checking for a microchip.

"But something must have happened to that person because, before she was scanned, she’d been hanging around some offices in Bletchley Sherwood Drive and the workers had been feeding her for a few weeks."

Finally one of them sensibly contacted the city Scan Angels group, whose volunteers come out free to scan stray pets, and the scan brought up Lola’s details.

Ironically, where she was found was only a short distance away from her old home.

"This story just goes to show you that you must never give up hope!” said June. “We are all thrilled.”

Lola’s case has caused the cat resue group to campaign harder than ever for owners to get their pets microchipped and also for people feeding stray cats to always check for a microchip first.

“If you are feeding, looking after or you regularly see what you think is a stray cat hanging around, PLEASE contact Scan Angels to check the cat for a chip. I will also come out to check if it’s local to me. The cat may just be lost like Lola was,” said June.

“Had this been done during the long eight years Lola was lost she could have got back home a heck of a lot sooner. Thankfully she was being well looked after by somebody.

"A lot of cats aren’t as lucky as Lola and often spend years struggling to survive on the streets for years.”