LONDON — A cat that went missing during a New Year’s Eve party way back at the start of 2014 has recently been reunited with her owners after an eight-and-a-half year absence.
The brilliantly named cat, Moon Unit, disappeared from Marna Gillian and Sean Purdy’s home in London only to miraculously turn up again in Paris this summer.
“We had a NYE party eight and a half years ago,” the 39-year-old Gillian told Mashable. “She must have slipped out at some point? We spent ages searching for her, postering/leafleting/phoning around etc. But no cat!”
Flash forward to late June of 2021, when Gillian received a very unexpected and strange email from an animal rescue charity — ADAD, which is based in France.
“We got an email about a month ago saying that a cat had been found in Paris and they’d traced us by her microchip,” she went on to explain. “I didn’t believe it was her — I thought it would be a mistake — until we exchanged photographs.
“She’s got a really distinctive stripe on her nose, so as soon as we saw the photo we knew we’d found her.”
Gillian recalled she was both astounded and delighted to find Moon Unit again.
“She was found in Essonne, a suburb south of Paris,” Gillian stated. “We have no idea how she got there. Our best guesses are that she stowed away, or found a new family, was brought over by them, and then ran away? The stowaway theory seems the most likely I think.
“She didn’t get there legally, we do know because her microchip would have been checked in that case.”
Gillian and her ex-partner travelled to Paris together to pick Moon Unit just last weekend.
“The rescue people sorted out her pet passport, and last Friday myself and my ex got the Eurostar to Paris and stayed overnight,” stated Gillian. “Her rescuers brought her to our hotel the next morning and drove us to the station. Then we got the TGV to Calais, where some friends met us with a car for the ferry home.”
Since Moon Unit has returned home, Gillians says she’s been doing very well re-adjusting.
“Lots of purring, and she’s been eating/sleeping/doing all the normal cat things. She’s mellowed a bit too — she was a fierce little cat when I first knew her.”
To make this odd story even stranger, Moon Unit was pregnant when her owners first took her in as a stray all those years ago. One of Moon Unit’s (now grown) kittens is still alive and living with Gillian.
They’re holding off on that reunion just until Moon Unit has settled in a bit.
“We haven’t reunited them yet,” Gillian went on to say. “Moon Unit is living with my ex while she settles back into a normal life. We thought being a solo cat for a while would be easier for her.
“She’s had a tough time, poor mog, and needs to recover.”
