Angelo and Shelley Castellino were devastated after their cat Butters ran away from their San Diego home in 2011.
“Butters was a very adventurous cat, he loved to go out and had learned to use the dog door,” Angelo told ABC 7. “And one day he never came back.”
When Butters didn’t show up anywhere, they feared a coyote might have gotten to him. Many years passed and they accepted that he was gone forever.
Cut to 12 years later. According to a press release from RCDAS, Riverside County Animal Control Officer Dalton Churchwell saw a cat roaming around his yard in Blythe, California on October 1.
He caught the cat and scanned him for a microchip. It turned out the cat had an owner and had been missing since 2011. It was Butters, still alive and well after all these years.
Dalton contacted the family, who couldn’t believe it. “At first we didn’t answer because we thought it was one of those scam calls, but when they called back, my wife picked up,” Angelo told ABC 7. “He told her they had Butters.”
“I thought it was a prank because the cat was gone for 12 years, but how did he know our cat’s name?”
But they quickly realized that it was not a prank, and a miracle had happened to them. “It was just unbelievable,” Angelo said in the press release. “I am very grateful to Officer Churchwell that Butters was identified. The officer really did his best. You know, he did it on a Sunday night, on his time off.”
The Castellanos were thrilled to be getting their long-lost cat back, but there was one hurdle: in the 12 years since Butters went missing, they relocated to Washington state, far from where the cat was found.
But luckily, the nonprofit ASK Foundation offered to sponsor a flight to Seattle so Butters could reunite with his family. Longtime RCDAS volunteer Larry Rudolph took the flight with the cat and delivered him to the Castellanos,
“We were thrilled to work with the Department of Animal Services to make this reunion possible,” said ASK Foundation president Carolyn Badger. “It was such a wonderful story and we are very happy to know that Butters is home and safe with his family.”
The story is truly miraculous: Larry Rudolph told ABC 7 that it was “meant to be” that Butters happened to cross paths with a shelter employee: “You’re talking about the area of Blythe, where it’s in the desert, where we have only two employees out there, and the cat decided to jump in his backyard.”
The family says it’s a reminder to always have your pets microchipped, making reunions like this still possible more than a decade later. “Our prodigal kitty has come home,” Shelley Castellino said. “I cannot stress enough how important it is to get your kitty cats and your doggies chipped.”
It’s unclear exactly what Butters has been up to all these years, but the most important thing is that he’s finally home, reunited with his family and his cat brother Barnacles.
What a miracle – we are so happy that Butters is finally home after 12 long years!