US family reunited with pet cat seven years after it was lost: ‘We always thought about him’

A family cat who got lost amid a move from California across the US is said to be settling back into his old ways with his humans at their new home in Georgia after experiencing an unlikely – but long hoped for – reunion more than seven years in the making.

As owner Amber Davidson-Orozco put in an interview on Wednesday, her cat Dodger still responds to his name and allows her sons to flip him playfully over their shoulders despite an absence from them that to the cat lasted the equivalent of roughly 24 years.
“Oh, he’s there. That super sweet, cuddly, social temperament is still there,” Davidson-Orozco remarked of Dodger. Referring to her sons Schylar and Zachary, who were about age eight and five respectively, and had lost their father when the cat vanished, Davidson said Dodger’s reappearance was as if a piece of their childhood had come back, saying: “That’s important.”

Dodger’s return to Davidson-Orozco’s family had captured national media attention in recent weeks. Besides serving as an emotional salve to media consumers drained by intense news cycles, it has also been held up as an example of how vital it can be to microchip pets – because Dodger’s being microchipped set the stage for his eventual reunion with his humans.

Dodger’s humans adopted him from Miss Winkles Pet Adoption center in Clovis, California, in 2016. Named after the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team its family supported, the cat firmly secured a place in their hearts and became another one of them, Davidson-Orozco recounted.