Police are calling for witnesses to come forward with information after a cat was abducted from Exeter and dumped on the streets of Newton Abbot.

Jeffery, a 2-year-old tabby, is believed to have been taken by a group of youths on, or around, Tuesday October 16. The teens put him in a backpack and took him on the train from Exeter to Newton Abbot. It is believed they let the frightened feline loose in the carriage of the train before they let him go in Newton Abbot.

Jeffery was left to wander the streets for nearly three weeks before he was reunited with his owner Liz Pole and her family on Sunday (November 10).

Police are appealing for anybody with information or relevant CCTV, or who may have been on the train between Exeter and Newton Abbot, to get in touch quoting 50240282980.

While Liz and her family are pleased to have Jeffery home, safe and well, she said ‘it would be good if they [the perpetrators] are not going to go through life thinking this is OK’.

Not only did Liz and her family have to deal with the pain of losing Jeffery, but while looking for him they were also the victims of a number of prank calls.

Two weeks after Jeffery went missing Liz received a call from a group of boys who claimed that they had Jeffery at Sports Direct. The family raced over to find nobody there. They received a similar call later that night where a group of youngsters claimed to have Jeffery at St Thomas railway station in Exeter. ‘I asked them to send a photo as it was late and we had already been pranked, but the caller claimed that the camera on their phone was not working,’ Liz recalled.

Eventually, there was hope when an identical cat to Jeffery was posted to the Hector’s House Facebook page. Hector’s House had scanned the neutered male cat but as he was not microchipped, they left him where he had been found with a paper collar. As Jeffery had been chipped when he was a kitten, they concluded it could not be him.

However, as this had been the only credible sighting of Jeffery, when Hector’s House picked up the cat again, they asked Liz to come over. It was obvious, when they were reunited, that Hector was back with his family.

Hector’s House are calling for pet owners to get their animals’ microchips checked at every vet visit. ‘It’s extremely rare for them to fail, but they can migrate out of the skin in the first month or two after implant,’ a spokesperson said.

Liz and her family are overjoyed to have Jeffery back at home. ‘He was the runt of the litter and an orphan so he was hand-reared,’ said Liz. ‘So he’s always been very sociable, which is possibly what got him into trouble.’

‘When Jeffery went missing, I was devastated,’ recalled Liz’s daughter, Anna. ‘He was very wary and watchful when he first came home. But he’s been back a couple of days now and is back in his normal routine; riding on the postman’s cart, visiting old ladies for treats and curling up all day asleep on the beds.’