CORONER’S officer Beth Hale concluded her pet cat Mowgli was dead after he disappeared 15 months ago.

But now the wanderer has returned unscathed, and Miss Hale and her family are trying to discover where he strayed to.

The Bengal Cross took flight from his home in Wantage over the Jubilee weekend last year, and his worried owners feared the worst.

But the five-year-old was found last week still wearing his collar and name tag and has now settled back in with Miss Hale, her partner Martin Whaley and their daughter Ava.

They have been left scratching their heads about where Mowgli has been since July 2 last year.

Miss Hale, 29, who now lives near Grove, said her family had lost hope of being reunited with Mowgli.

She said: “We just assumed that he was run over because he was gone so long. We’d put out ‘missing cat’ signs around Wantage and Grove and went door-knocking with no luck.

“He was found at Lains Barn near Ardington, which is way out in the sticks about two miles from where we lived when he ran away.

“He’s the miracle cat. It’s funny that his name is Mowgli and he went wild in the woods, just like in the Jungle Book cartoon.”

Mowgli was missing for so long that the family moved house and bought two new cats in his absence.

Miss Hale said: “We bought two more cats because we thought Mowgli was never coming back – we thought he had probably been killed.”

But last Thursday, Mr Whaley, a police officer, received a surprising phone call.

Miss Hale said: “Martin got a call from a vet who had found our number on Mowgli’s ID collar saying Mowgli had been found near Ardington so he went to pick him up and now he’s back with us.

“He looks amazing. Somebody has obviously been taking care of him because he wasn’t sick or anything.

“I’m not sure if he remembers us, and of course now we’ve got two other cats so we’re not quite sure what to do. We’re hoping he gets on with them.”

As Mowgli tries to settle in to his new life back at home, getting to know three-year-old Ava – who was just a baby when he disappeared – along with his new feline friends, his owners are trying to piece together his life over the last 15 months.

Miss Hale said: “We have no idea what he’s been doing.”

Mowgli is not the first cat to be returned to his owners after going missing for a long time.

In 2010, Bob the kitten was reunited with his Northampton-based owner Claire Dalton after turning up in Stanford in the Vale, near Wantage, 60 miles from home, after being missing for four months.

And in March last year, family cat Kariba strolled back into his home in Horspath, near Oxford after a nine-month disappearance, only to find there was a new cat in the house.