IT HAD been 19 months.

After flooding the streets with posters when he first went missing, one Southampton woman had accepted that her cat wasn’t going to return home.

Now, in a remarkable turn of events, 38-year-old Rebecca Morris is celebrating after being reunited with Alfie.

Rebecca, of Shirley, lost four-year-old Alfie in October 2015 after he didn’t return home from being let out.

Rebecca, an events and communications officer, said: “I came home from work one day and he wasn’t there. I went to the vets and I put it on social media but I couldn’t see anything.

“Time went on and I accepted that he wasn’t going to come home. George, his brother, was a bit confused about what was happening.”

Despite Alfie having gone missing, Rebecca, without realising, continued to pay his pet insurance until she remembered to cancel it just two weeks before Alfie came home.

She said: “I don’t think that he has been totally out in the wild for almost two years, he looks like he has been fed although his skin is in a bad condition.

“The woman who found him said there was a nearby building site and he kept coming back. She realised that he wasn’t a stray cat and probably had an owner somewhere, so after three weeks she gained his trust enough to grab him.

“She took him to her vets, which also happens to be the same one I use on Winchester Road. He is microchipped, so they scanned him and I received one of the strangest phone calls I’ve ever had.”

After being reunited with Alfie, Rebecca was keen to post the happy news on social media.

She said: “The vets asked me if I had a cat named Alfie, and I said that I used to, I just couldn’t believe it. I posted online and it’s had more than 500 responses now.

“He has been reunited with his brother George and they’re getting along great. I came home from work and they were chasing each other around the lounge.”