Eight months after going missing, Barnaby returns home thanks to his distinctive meow.

Rachael Lawrence, a mother-of-three from Braintree, Essex, experienced an emotional reunion with her missing cat Barnaby after recognising his meow during a phone call to her vet. Barnaby had been missing for eight months.

Rachael initially contacted the vet to check on her younger cat, Torvi, who was undergoing a procedure. While on the call, she heard a meow in the background that felt familiar. “I asked if it was Torvi meowing, but they said, ‘No, that’s just a stray we had brought in a week ago,’” Rachael recounted.

Unable to shake the feeling, she called back hours later and asked if the stray was black with a white patch on one of its back feet. When the vet confirmed the description, she brought photos of Barnaby, affectionately nicknamed “Fatman” by her family, to compare.

“When they brought him into the room, I knew it was him immediately,” Rachael said. “I cried—proper, snot-bubble crying. We hadn’t seen him in eight months.”

She shared the happy moment with her children, Be (12), Joshua (11), and Amalie (7), via video call. “I said, ‘Look who I’ve found,’ and they shouted, ‘Oh, my god, it’s Barney! It’s Fatman!’ They were thrilled.”

Although Barnaby returned home thin, missing patches of fur, and covered in scabs, he quickly settled back into family life. “He’s happy to be cuddled again,” Rachael said, adding with a laugh, “Now we just need to fatten him back up to get him to his old self!”

The experience also highlighted a mishap with Barnaby’s microchip, which Rachael had paid to have implanted before his disappearance but suspects wasn’t done correctly.

Barnaby is now back where he belongs, proving that even a meow can make all the difference in finding a missing loved one.