As the sound rang out across the bedroom, it was immediately clear Mr Jeremy Beard had not returned home.
It was May 17, 2022 and Liz woke to her alarm shortly after 7am. More than three hours had passed since her usual morning wake-up with cuddles after a scratch at her pillow.
“He has a routine where he comes in and has a cuddle in bed and in the summer he wakes me up early, half three, scratching at my pillow. He gets me up,” Liz tells 9Honey of her and partner Charlie’s beloved black-and-white cat, Mr Beard.
“He hadn’t woken me up that morning. My alarm had woken me. Charlie was still in bed.”
Staying out all night was out of character for nine-year-old Mr Beard. He was a creature of habit and had never disappeared in this manner before.
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He would usually make his presence known in the couple’s garden and was a sensible cat, taking care around the busy streets of his local Greater Manchester area in the UK.
Yet, unbeknownst to Mr Beard or his owners they would not be reunited for 165 days, or more than five months.
To make matters worse, after the early morning realisation Mr Beard was missing, Liz and Charlie had a major event at their local golf club. The long day ahead made dropping everything to search for him impossible.
They were hosting a tournament and as the ladies’ club captain, Liz, was expected to make a speech. Her words were peppered with tears and worry for their beloved pet.
“I had about three days of particularly torrent times when young people, older teenagers, were ringing constantly.”
Later that night, after the tournament the couple took to the streets searching for Mr Beard. It was the start of a daily pilgrimage, leafleting the area with missing posters.
“We went walking every single night. All through summer for six to eight weeks,” Charlie tells 9Honey.
Liz also took their search online, contacting the Facebook pages of missing cat groups, local pages and organisations.
There were a number of reported sightings the couple immediately followed up in the hope it was Mr Beard. It wasn’t, just a different black and white cat.
The couple soon put out a reward of £500, or more than $800. Then the phone calls started.
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“I had about three days of particularly torrent times when young people, older teenagers, were ringing constantly. Every few minutes,” Liz says.
“‘We’ve got your cat’, they would say. ‘I’ve cut its legs off and I’m going to barbecue them'”.
Sensing Liz’s upset, Charlie quietly interjects. It’s best not to speak too much about those calls. The trauma is still raw.
“We also had lots of nice messages from all the pet owners. We actually met and connected with so many people,” Charlie says.
“Even the mad cat lady was looking out for him.”
During Mr Beard’s disappearance there were numerous conspiracy theories as to what had happened, from being the victim of a cat-napper to the unthinkable road accident.
In August 2022, three months after he went missing, the UK experienced its third heatwave in as many months. Temperatures peaked at a record 40.3°C.
It was at this point the couple felt Mr Beard would not have survived in the heat. Allowing such thoughts was another heartbreaking blow in their search.
By late September, Liz collected his cat food and donated it to a local cat rescue.
“I had a right sob that morning,” she says.
A few weeks later Charlie raised the subject of cancelling the pet insurance. She had renewed the policy a week before Mr Beard went missing.
“When it got to five months I said, ‘I think we need to cancel it now’,” Liz says.
“I cancelled it online and I got a cheque in the post. But for some reason I couldn’t bank the cheque. It just wasn’t working,” Charlie adds.
It was late October when Liz says she went to the post box to post a birthday card for a friend and decided to go for a walk to search for Mr Beard.
Something told her she was going to see him. She didn’t. Yet when she got home as she was doing a bit of tidying around the house a message flashed up on her smartwatch.
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She thought it might be a message from Charlie, who had travelled down to London to meet up with friends.
“I looked at my phone and there was a photo of my cat,” Liz recalls.
“I then got a phone call from a different number and she said, ‘My name is Jane, you gave me a leaflet in May when I was walking the dogs and I’ve kept it. I was just on the bus and I was flicking through Facebook and I saw a post about your cat'”.
Jane urged Liz to check out the Facebook page. There was a message from a woman saying she’d found “a homeless cat” in her garden for about a month. She was reaching out to see if anyone was missing him.
The cat was Mr Beard, Liz was sure of it. He was found almost two kilometres away from the couple’s home, across from a busy motorway and roundabout.
“There were lots of comments on the post, with someone posting, ‘Have you had him scanned?’ Her response was, ‘No, I don’t know how to do that’,” Liz says.
“In the meantime, it wouldn’t accept my comments. I contacted the admin asking if they could get a message to this person that has my cat.”
Liz then direct-messaged the woman and about 45 minutes later she replied, asking for proof the cat was hers.
“I bombarded her with hundreds of photos. It got to the point where she replied with, ‘He’s obviously yours,” Liz says.
“I rang Charlie in the meantime, ‘He’s alive’… we went straight up there. I gave him a treat and we got him home.”
After his return home, the couple kept Mr Beard indoors for two weeks to help him reacquaint himself with his chosen territory.
“He’s been a little prince ever since,” Liz says.
Mr Beard has lived with Liz and Charlie since 2017 after choosing their garage to shelter from his feisty siblings.
He originally lived a few streets away, yet sought solace in the then strange garage.
The couple tracked down his first owner, offering to return him. She politely suggested he was happier with them and they officially adopted him and gave him a name.
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