'Magical news' as cat missing from south coast is found in Wigan 10 years later

Tabby cat Chubbs was reportedly taken to Rutland House Vets by a woman who saw him regularly following schoolchildren in Ashton.

She told the BBC: "The day that I picked him up he was slowly walking across the main road in random directions, weaving between moving cars and narrowly being missed.

"I couldn't leave him there to get run over so I picked him up from the centre of the road and took him into my car.

"He was so friendly and lovely, but extremely skinny, covered in fleas, soaking wet – it had been raining heavily the night before – and generally looking like a stray."

Staff at the veterinary practice discovered Chubbs had a microchip and used that to identify his owner Donna Gallacher, from Weymouth in Dorset.

She was delighted to receive a email saying he had been found, as she had never given up hope of being reunited with Chubbs.

He went missing in 2012 and it was suspected he had been stolen from the street by someone on holiday in the area.

Chubbs is now back at his original home in Dorset.

Donna told the Dorset Echo: “I was overwhelmed by it," she said. "I knew in my heart that he was still alive, I just knew he was out there somewhere.

"The fact that he's come back to me after all this time is a miracle. It's just magical news."