Meet the runaway cat who came in from the cold - almost three years after going missing.

Sarah Aldred feared she had seen the last of tortoiseshell tabby Odie, who absconded while her family was on holiday over Christmas 2000.

Frantic searches for her in the months that followed all failed.

Now, nearly three yaers later, 12-year-old Odie has now turned up at an animal sanctuary less than ten miles away.

Sarah, 36, a part-time cleaner, from Moorhead Road, Roffey, near Horsham, said: "When we came back from holiday and discovered she had gone missing, we looked everywhere for her. She just wasn't the type of cat to wander off.

"We were all really upset. I've had her since she was three weeks old.

"All we could do was just keep listening out for her. You just keep looking and every time you see a cat like her, you think it is her."

Sarah's youngest children Dominic, four, and Elise, one, are too young to remember Odie from the first time round but nine-year-old Jacob, 15-year-old Zoe and Sarah's husband Paul were devastated when their pet disappeared.

Sarah said: "I told my husband I was convinced she wasn't dead.

"She's such a naughty cat and she's always up to mischief. But it wasn't like her to go disappearing off.

"I could go to work and she'd wait at the end of the road. She's very doting."

It seems Odie, who has no tail, had found herself a new home just two miles away with a couple who had found her wandering around Broadbridge Heath.

But her new owners decided last May they could no longer keep Odie, who had become incontinent, and she was given to animal charity Cats Protection.

Staff at the Barnjet Shelter in Crawley Down gave Odie just the right amount of TLC and several months later she was ready to be rehoused.

Meanwhile, Sarah discovered Cats Protection's web site after developing an interest in computers and emailed the charity in response to an online ad about a tortoiseshell cat that had been found.

She visited the centre and discovered Odie waiting for her.

Sarah said: "I really was pleased. I just thought, 'I knew you wouldn't go anywhere'. I walked in, picked her up and gave her a big cuddle.

"She's not the friendliest of cats and is a bit moody. But they said it was the first time they'd seen her really relaxed.

"When I got her home, she walked round the front room oand the house and that was it - it was like she'd never been away.

"We've got a border collie as well who is about seven and was really pleased to see the cat, although I think the cat wasn't too pleased to see the dog."

The centre told Sarah it was only the second time in 20 years a runaway cat had been returned to its owner.

Odie has now been microchipped. Shelter manager Betty Boud said: "Microchipping is the only safe and permanent method of identifying pets.

"While microchipping cannot guarantee a pet is found, it can increase the chances of a lost pet being safely reunited with its owner."