A Japanese woman was overjoyed to reunite with her cat three years after it
disappeared during the 2011 tsunami disaster. Even the cat looked moderately
pleased — by feline standards.
Suika (Japanese for "watermelon") went missing when a tsunami struck the city of Ofunato on March 11, 2011, the same wave that sparked the notorious nuclear disaster in the Fukushima prefecture.
Kazuko Yamagishi, who is in her sixties, searched for Suika with her husband Takeo for three months before finally giving up hope, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reports.
But in April 2013, a couple spotted a black cat living in a pine forest in Rikuzentakata, a city about 15km from Ofunato that was also hit hard by the tsunami.
Realising the cat wore a collar and was friendly, the couple took Suika to an Ofunato shelter where an employee spotted Mr Yamagishi's mobile phone number written on the animal's worn collar.
It is unclear how Suika survived the tsunami or how long he had been living in Rikuzentakata — but at some point in his missing three years, someone attached a bell to his collar.
Ms Yamagishi said her 36-year-old daughter cried when she learned that Suika, who has been with the family for 12 years, was still alive.
