Cat who went missing for nearly five years in Sussex is reunited with his owners

When Chaos vanished, his owners Darren and Gemma Hudson were devastated.

He had been bought as a present for Darren’s birthday and the pair quickly became best friends, until Chaos went missing exactly six years later to the day.

Gemma said: “Chaos was a member of our family and we loved him dearly. It was extremely painful when he didn't come home.”

The pair searched for months, scouring nearby fields and lay-bys, and appealing for help online.

After all this time, they had given up hope and believed he wasn’t coming back – until they received an unexpected call.

Darren said: “We were just going about our business when my wife received a call from Chichester Vets asking about Chaos.

“At first, Gemma couldn’t believe it and just thought it might be another mistaken identity.

“But it turned out to be him.”

Darren and Gemma believe Chaos had been abducted from outside their home in Ford and dumped in Slindon.

Since then, he had been living with an elderly lady but, when she passed away, he was taken to the vets to be rehomed as there was no one to care for him.

However, when the vet scanned his microchip, it was realised that he already belonged to someone and had been registered as a missing cat.

Darren said: “Gemma phoned me crying saying they’d found Chaos, but I couldn’t believe it. I’m still struggling to believe it.

“I left within ten minutes of hearing that and went to go pick him up.”

Despite the lost time, Chaos recognised his owner after all these years.

Darren added: “As soon as I said his name, he stood up and walked over to me purring.

“He’s still with me now. He doesn’t really leave my side at the moment.”

The couple have received many mistaken identity calls over the past five years, and on multiple occasions have travelled miles to see missing cats who turned out to belong to someone else.

Darren said: “You constantly have glimmers of hope but don’t get anything from it. You kind of get whittled down.

“The worst part was not knowing, if he was dead we would have got closure. But we never got that. We never knew.

"We were worried he was in someone’s house getting mistreated. Your mind goes to all sorts of places.”

The bittersweet reality is that Chaos is now 11 years old and is showing ‘signs of wear and tear’, including possible stress-induced epilepsy, while Gemma and Darren have to come to terms with the fact that they have missed out on five years of their beloved cat’s life.

Darren said: “He’s an old cat now. He was six when he left us, and now he’s 11.

“It’s horrible that that’s been taken from me.”

Gemma said: “We are grateful he was looked after by the kind lady but so upset we have lost almost five years with our dear cat.”

Chaos is now settling into his former home and getting used to living with three other cats who Gemma and Darren adopted while Chaos was missing.

During those five years, Gemma and Darren talked about Chaos regularly and joked about his ‘wild’ character. While they’re relieved to have him back after all this time, they said if he had been taken to the vets when he was first found, they would have been reunited much sooner.

They are now encouraging cat owners to microchip their beloved felines to prevent them going through the same heartache, and are urging anyone who finds a stray cat to take it to the vet to be scanned.

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