Suzu: “Kotaro, you’re alive!” A male cat was found safe and reunited with his owner more than a month after he went missing in the Jan. 1 major earthquake that hit the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan.

“I thought I’d never see him again. I can’t believe it,” said the cat’s owner, Eriko Matsuda, a 44-year-old public worker in Kanazawa, the capital of Ishikawa.

Matsuda had raised Kotaro lovingly since the day she took him in, just after she married. He had been abandoned several months after his birth.

During the New Year holiday, 11-year-old Kotaro was staying with Matsuda and her family at her parents’ home in the city of Suzu in Ishikawa.

On New Year’s Day, Matsuda and her family were visiting Mitsukejima, an island in Suzu and a major sightseeing spot, leaving Kotaro at home.

Soon after the 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck, Matsuda hurried home.

While the house was almost completely flattened, Matsuda’s father, who was also staying at home, did not suffer major injuries. But Kotaro was nowhere to be found.

After spending four days at places including the garage at the parents’ house, which did not collapse, Matsuda returned to her home in Kanazawa. Kotaro still had not turned up.

For her two daughters, 10 and 6, Kotaro has been “like a brother who watches over them” because he has been with the girls since they were born, Matsuda said. “Is Ko-chan (Kotaro) dead?” the girls asked tearfully as the whereabouts of Kotaro remained a mystery.

In cooperation with a support group, Matsuda sought information about Kotaro by distributing flyers at evacuation centers, among other measures.

But a month passed with no progress. Matsuda said she had been about to give up.

Still, hoping against hope, Matsuda visited her parents’ damaged home on Sunday to install a surveillance camera.

About an hour after she started the work, Kotaro showed up, around where the back door had been.

He was uninjured, but could eat almost nothing and was thin.

“I’m sorry for making you feel scared. You held on well,” Matsuda told Kotaro, stroking him again and again.

Kotaro weighed 5 kilograms before the disaster. But he was a kilogram lighter when he returned.

At an animal hospital, Kotaro was diagnosed with extreme dehydration and anemia, and received an intravenous drip.

Matsuda said, “I want him to get better in his own time.”

JIJI Press