Cat returns home after going missing for 10 years and it turns out it's been living in neighbor's house

A cat which went missing 10 years ago has turned up alive and well to the shock of her owner.

Alex Elliott, 39, was heartbroken when her cat Lilly disappeared in 2009. Alex and her family put up posters in a desperate attempt to find Lilly. When they didn't find her, they assumed she had been run over by a car. 

However, Alex was shocked when two weeks ago, she got a call to say Lilly was at a local vets. She visited the vet this January and found her cat there. The cat had been traced back to her original family because she had been microchipped.

  

The cat, now 15, had been living in a house less than a mile away from Alex's home. A man had adopted the cat after finding her and thinking she was a stray.

Alex, whose youngest child had not even been born when Lilly disappeared, was amazed by this discovery. It turns out that the house where the cat was living in was on a route which Alex took every weekday on the school run with her daughters Emily, 10, and Kate, 7.

Alex was only reunited with the pet after Lilly was scanned by vets when the neighbour decided he no longer wanted her.