A PET cat may have lost some of his nine lives after going missing for 19 months.

Miracle moggy Cookie is thought to have survived two winters hunting mice and being fed by homeowners after he got out of Dog’s Pad cattery, Knutsford Road, in May 2011.

Delighted owners Colin and Melanie Holce and their two children Jenny, aged 12, and Michael, aged 10, said they are still in disbelief they have got the four-year-old tabby cat back after a phone call on Christmas day.

Colin, of Denbury Avenue, Stockton Heath, said: “We had a call from a couple in Lymm six or seven miles away saying they had found our cat.

“Their friend who was a vet scanned Cookie for a microchip to see if he had an owner and our details came up.

“They brought him round and the first thing he did was run upstairs to our daughter’s bedroom and on her bed which was where he always slept.

“It was amazing.”

The family believe the rescue cat from the Cats Protection, which they have had since he was a kitten, may have jumped on a barge as the Bridgewater canal runs near the cattery and behind Jim and Tracy Hodge’s home on Bradshaw Lane, Lymm.

Melanie, aged 50, said: “There were some really kind people who called us when Cookie first went missing who tried to help.

“I was still shaking the cat biscuits and calling his name for seven months after and I knew he must have been somewhere alive as he had been microchipped.

“It’s been wonderful to have him back.”