Woman reunited with cat who went missing 12 years ago

In the words of Peaches and Herb, "Reunited and it feels so good!" On December 12, Gayl O'Donnell of Lake Wylie, South Carolina got the shock of her life when her veterinarian's office called and said they had her cat Sonny, reports the Citizen-Times. O'Donnell hadn't seen Sonny since he went missing in the late 1990s while in the care of O'Donnell's boyfriend -- a dozen years ago.

“I was quiet for a minute,” O'Donnell tells the Citizen-Times. “They gave me the [microchip] number. I was in disbelief.”

Indeed, it was the microchip that Sonny had been implanted with all those years ago that led to his reunion with O'Donnell, who had adopted the cat as a stray kitten in 1997, reports the Citizen-Times.

“I was sick for three years,” O'Donnell says of Sonny's disappearance. “I never got over him. There was no closure. I searched day and night calling out his name. I cried myself to sleep many nights, and throughout the years always wondered what happened to Sonny. Where is he? It was such a mystery.”

While it's not clear where Sonny spent most of the past 12 years, he landed at an animal shelter in Asheville after being picked up by animal control officers. Sonny was living on the grounds of a mobile home park, thin and covered with fleas.The shelter scanned Sonny and found his microchip, which led them to O'Donnell's veterinarian.

O'Donnell wasted no time getting to the shelter, where she approached her old friend sitting in a cage. “I said, ‘Hey Sonny,' and he put his two paws through the door," O'Donnell tells the Citizen-Times. "I opened the cage, and he nuzzled me like he always did. I was fighting back tears.”