Cat ‘returns from dead’ four days after Thornaby cremation

A cat surprised its owners by walking through the cat flap days after it was thought to have been cremated.

Nicci Knight was on holiday with her family in Turkey when she was told by her neighbours they had found her cat, Ted, drowned in their pond.

She quickly organised for the body to be cremated in Thornaby while she was away. However, four days after the ceremony, Ted walked into her home and she realised she had cremated a mystery cat.

Vicki Crallan, the director of Heavenly Pets Crematorium, said it was “bittersweet” and she was worried there was a family out there “missing somebody”.

Ms Knight, from Newby, North Yorkshire, had been halfway through a two-week holiday with her family when they heard the news about Ted.

Their neighbour sent a video through Ms Knight’s Ring doorbell about finding a dead cat, which they believed to be Ted, in their pond.

“I had to break the news to my husband and our four children and we were all absolutely devastated, because Ted is a huge personality and a beloved member of the family,” she said.

Not wanting to burden her neighbour with Ted’s body until the family returned from holiday, Ms Knight organised for Heavenly Pets Crematorium to collect the body and cremate it.

But four days after the cremation, Ms Knight got out of the pool in Turkey to several missed calls from her cat sitter, who had been looking after the family’s other cat.

“I was in the pool again having a lovely time having, you know, put it [Ted’s death] behind us,” she said.

The cat sitter told Ms Knight that Ted had just walked through the cat flap.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” she said. “I had to get her to FaceTime me live so that I could see that Ted was actually alive.”

The truth of the matter quickly dawned on her.

“I’ve paid £130 to cremate someone else’s cat,” she said.

When she later went to collect the cat’s ashes, she saw the urn had been labelled “Not Dead Ted”.

The family have not been able to trace the owner of the dead cat.

“So we do think it’s actually a stray cat, possibly a farm cat,” she said. “We are peaceful with the knowledge that we’ve given it a good send-off.”

She said the family were “ecstatic” to still have Ted in their lives, but Ted was less concerned.

“He’s completely oblivious,” she said. “We still see him wandering over the road towards the neighbour’s garden so we have to go and retrieve him because, you know, we don’t actually want him going into the pond.”

Ms Crallan said the crematorium would be donating the cremation fee to a local cat rescue centre.