Cat “awakens from the dead” four days after cremation

A cat surprised her owners by going through the cat flap a few days after she was thought to have been cremated.

Nicci Knight was on holiday in Turkey with her family when her neighbours told her they had found her cat Ted drowned in their pond.

She quickly arranged for the body to be cremated in Thornaby while she was away. However, four days after the ceremony, Ted came to her house and she realised that she had cremated an unknown cat.

Vicki Crallan, manager of Heavenly Pets Crematorium, said it was “bittersweet” and she worried there was a family out there who was “missing someone”.

Mrs Knight, from Newby in North Yorkshire, was in the middle of a two-week holiday with her family when they heard the news about Ted.

Her neighbor sent a video through Ms. Knight’s Ring doorbell of finding a dead cat in his pond, believed to be Ted.

“I had to break the news to my husband and our four children and we were all devastated because Ted is a great person and a beloved member of the family,” she said.

Not wanting to burden her neighbor with Ted’s body until the family returned from vacation, Mrs. Knight arranged for the body to be picked up and cremated by Heavenly Pets Crematorium.

But four days after the cremation, Ms Knight got out of the pool in Turkey and missed several calls from her cat sitter, who had been looking after the family’s other cat.

“I was back in the pool and had a wonderful time after we put it (Ted’s death) behind us,” she said.

The cat sitter told Mrs Knight that Ted had just walked through the cat flap.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” she said. “I had to get her to call me live on FaceTime so I could see that Ted was actually alive.”

The truth of the matter quickly became clear to her.

“I paid £130 to cremate someone else’s cat,” she said.

When she later went to collect the cat’s ashes, she saw that the urn was labeled “Not Dead Ted.”

“Nice farewell”

The family was unable to locate the owner of the dead cat.

“So we believe that this is indeed a stray cat, possibly a farm cat,” she said. “We are relieved knowing that we gave her a good send-off.”

She said the family was “overjoyed” to still have Ted in their lives, but Ted was less concerned.

“He’s totally clueless,” she said. “We still see him wandering across the street toward the neighbor’s yard, so we have to go and get him because, you know, we don’t really want him to go into the pond.”

Ms Crallan said the crematorium would donate the cremation fee to a local cat rescue centre.

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