Found His Family After 6 Years of Searching!

​As the owner keeps saying, this is a story that needs to be made into a movie.

A sweet black cat found his way into a kind woman’s yard and she began caring for him. She saw how sweet he was and thought maybe he could be someone’s missing family member. So she posted a picture to a local lost pets page. Another kind woman offered to come scan him for a microchip. Microchip found. But it was a dead end.

Thankfully the woman who scanned him knew of Microchip Hunters. She submitted the case and things took a strange turn once we started researching it.

Volunteer Sarah K tried to contact the person on the microchip multiple different ways and also tried relatives and possible neighbors. No one responded.

Microchip Hunters let the finder know that Sarah K unfortunately didn’t have any luck tracking down the owner. The finder emailed back which made us scratch our heads. She asked: “Is the owner’s name Kim? Someone named Kim B. commented on our Facebook post that this looks like a cat she lost She said "she received a call that someone scanned her cat and they're trying to reunite them". The name on the chip was Kim… But no one had responded to Sarah’s attempts at contact. So how did the owner find the post instead of responding to our team?

The strangeness continued. Sarah reached out to the commenter on the Facebook post. She confirmed the full name that was on the microchip, but her last name was different and we couldn’t figure out a connection between the Kim that we were talking to and the Kim that was listed on the chip. Then it dawned on Sarah to ask if this was a different person with the same first name. Yep. Kim #1 bought the cat as a gift for Kim #2 and they never updated the microchip registration.

Kim #1 did receive a text from Sarah but was dealing with family health issues. She called Kim #2 to tell her someone might have found Smokey (now Wootie) and to look into it. But neither of them contacted Sarah directly because they thought maybe it was a scam. So Kim #2 took to Facebook to see if she could find more info on the found cat.

Once Sarah spoke with both Kims, she let the finder know that yes, this was the long lost owner! And the story gets even wilder.

The Kims told us that in 2019, Kim #2 was moving and a friend of hers was watching her cat. While at the friends house, he slipped out. They looked and looked but didn’t find him. Kim moved but she and Kim #1 kept returning to the neighborhood to search for Wootie.

Fast forward to 2026. Wootie had made his way to the same block that Kim #2 moved from. And settled in there when the finder started caring for him. We think he traveled a couple of miles back to his neighborhood looking for his owner. And it took a kind woman caring for him and another wonderful woman scanning for a chip to get him back to her.

The cat was reunited with Kim and her husband this weekend and everyone involved couldn’t hold back the tears. After 6 long years, Wootie was finally back with his loving family who was missing him so much the whole time. Those that were there said it was undeniable that Wootie recognized Kim right away.

Another reminder of how important it is to scan for a microchip, even when it’s a “neighborhood cat”. It just could happen that that cat has a loving home he wants to go back to.