A sleepy cat has finally been found, more than two months after he went missing when he jumped into the back of a mattress delivery van.
Yogi the tabby moggie jumped into the van and was taken around ten miles away before returning to his worried family as if nothing had happened.
Unaware of their new passenger the van drivers set off from the home in Gravesend, Kent, to another stop in the Kent town before heading to Rochester and then Dartford.
The intrepid feline was spotted on CCTV catching the ride on a Bensons for Beds vehicle outside his home on September 1, leaving distraught owners Stephanie and Tom Giffard believing they had lost him forever.
A search for the missing pet was launched with appeals on social media and posters put around the area, with only a few possible sightings reported.
But last Sunday Yogi was found by a member of the public who recognised him from a Facebook appeal and was reunited with the Giffards.
Yogi was last seen heading towards Rochester and then Dartford but was found near Rochester – 30 miles from his home in Gravesend.
It remains a mystery where the five-year-old Tom has spent most of the past two months
For Stephanie, 28, and her family the news that Yogi had been found was a bolt from the blue.
She said: “We weren’t 100 per cent sure what area he was in. We had quite a few possible sightings in Gravesend and I spent a lot of time driving up that area.
“There was quite a lot of help from friends on social media, people went out and put up posters for me, and sent messages wishing he would make his safe return home.
“I told a friend that I would stop looking and it’s just a coincidence that just as I stopped diving around, someone got in touch.”
The Martin family who found Yogi had seen the appeal for information about his whereabouts on a Facebook group called ‘Gravesend and surrounding areas lost and found pets’ and got in touch with Stephanie through the group’s owner, Sheona Loveridge.
Sheona, 40, of Kent, said: “She started sending photos and I got Stephanie and she said she thought it was Yogi.
“We went down there and Stephanie said I think it is him. We ran a scanner to check and the database said it was a male tabby called Yogi.
“It was the power of social media that got Yogi home. A lot of cats go missing by going wandering from home, but Yogi was different. We knew the van’s route and he could have ended up in Dartford or Rochester.
“We think he must have got off in Lower Stoke. It would have been about a 40 minute walk for him to end up where he was, so he did well and was a lucky boy to get back home.”
“This group is all volunteer work but to get the ending that Yogi had means everything. It’s so nice to be able to help reuniting an animal.”
Yogi had previously gone missing for eight days after getting trapped in someone’s garage, but despite his lengthy absence this time round, he was in great shape.
Under the loving watch of Sophie and three-month-old, Lucie, and back with his brothers, Tiger and Marble, Yogi has settled in like he’s never been away.
Stephanie said: “He looked well fed and looked after, so I don’t know if he had been with another family before.
“As soon as we came in and I said his name he responded. My two-and-a-half-year-old Sophie didn’t go to bed until 10pm because she was so excited.
“Straight away he was back into his normal routine. He went straight to his food bowl and started meowing when he saw it was empty.”
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