Cat returns home four years after going missing
A missing cat has returned home just in time for Christmas - four years after it disappeared.
Black and white cat Spencer disappeared from his home in Newton Abbot, Devon, in December 2016.
Even after four years, his owner Amy Sheriff said she always checked twice if she saw a black and white cat that looked like him.
But nothing prepared her for the moment she got a call to say Spencer had been found seven miles away in Paignton.
Amy said: "It was really overwhelming - I was with a friend at the time I had the phone call and I was so shocked that she thought somebody must have died."
No-one knows how the cat got to Paignton, but workmen at a double glazing factory said he was all "skin and bone" when he turned up. The drivers at Interframe on Aspen Way started feeding him Whiskas every morning with a special Chinese on a Friday.
They made a bed for him under the transport area and Spencer would climb up on people's laps for cuddles.
They said he would normally turn up for breakfast at 7am and come back for the workers' morning break at 10.30am.Joanne, whose husband works at the site, said: "They were all very fond of him. He was regularly wormed and flea-ed.
"My husband has recently started working there and when I heard he had a wound I volunteered to take him to our vets, asking them to scan him for a chip.
"I was overjoyed when he was identified."
Spencer has now gone to live with Amy's daughter Mya in Bristol.
Amy explained life in her house has moved on since Spencer left - she now also has a dog and her two sons are six and four.Amy said: "I still have Spencer's mum, Saffy. He was one of a litter and we kept him for my daughter Mya.
"She cried when she heard that he was back home and so we thought he would be happiest with her.
"He's a very friendly cat. He was injured and taken to a vet who scanned him and discovered he had been microchipped.
"He really seemed pleased to be back home but my youngest son is very loud and we decided Spencer would be happiest living with Mya, because he was her cat before she went off to Bristol for university.
"He's got a wound but it is healing up well and he just seems like his old self again.
"The biggest mystery is how he managed to get from Newton Abbot to Paignton.
"The workmen remember him turning up about four years ago, hissing, and skin and bone."
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