A CAT has been reunited with his family after being missing for THREE years.

Opi arrived in the UK after travelling to Askam with his owner Tanya Hadwick from Los Angeles - but due to her moving around with her work Opi stayed with her sister Natalie Hadwick.

“I had only had him a few weeks and I had a little holiday booked. My cats all went to my mam’s and the day that I went to pick them up was the day he went missing,” said Natalie.

The now 16-year-old Opi was thought to have been spooked by a visiting dog at the home on Beach Street in Askam.

Natalie, who lives in Barrow, said: “We’d lost hope. We didn’t think we’d get him back at all.

“I’d love to know where he has been. He was a house cat originally which is why we worried so much.

“We got the feeling that someone must have taken him and we were just hoping he was being looked after.”

The amazing reunion occurred after a post in the Facebook group Barrow-in-Furness Lost and Found Pets sparked a memory in those who saw the original pleas in the hunt for Opi on Monday.

The post said a ‘beautiful cat’ had been around Beach Street for around six weeks.

“I got a phonecall from the lost and found lady," said Natalie. “She said I remember the cat from all them years ago, something just stuck with me. But she said don’t build your hopes up.

“We went down looking as soon as we got the message. I said it’s definitely him and I got my daughter to run down to my mams and get the cat carrier and put it in the garden then he went and sniffed it - it was lovely.

“He’d been there for six weeks living under the shed and a lovely couple had been feeding him.”

A microchip number confirmed that it was indeed Opi.

Natalie said: “He’s looking well. We have de-flead him and just waiting to start his vaccines now.

“My other cats don’t know what to do. He has settled in lovely.

“If you call him Opi and he comes running so he must remember his name.

“They say that cats had more than one home but he’s had more than a few I’d say – it’s lovely to have him back.”

Tanya, who now lives in St Lucia, says that Sharon and Norma, the admins of Barrow-in-Furness Lost and Found Pets, get ‘huge kudos’ for remembering about Opi and reaching out to her ‘the minute the post was up’.