Trussville’s Patty Cambron and Tre Pullins received a sweet New Year’s Day surprise this week when their long missing cat Sugarbear was found just 30 minutes away from their home.

“PetLink [a microchip company] called,” Cambron said.

“They said a lady has found Sugarbear and she’s got him and, you know, give her a call. And so, I did. And she said, yeah, I live in Bluff Park, and I just found him. I was out raking leaves, and he was out there.”

“And she’s kind of like an animal person. I can tell. She fosters and stuff like that. So, she decided to get him scanned for a chip, and sure enough, they linked him back to us.”

Sugarbear escaped the house and went missing in 2019, shortly after the pair moved from Leeds to Trussville and hadn’t been seen since.

So, Cambron said, the call came as a shock.

“We were just flabbergasted. After five years, we hadn’t seen him, you know, at all,” she explained.

“We didn’t know if he had a new family or if he was dead, or what. And turns out he was, I mean, 30 minutes away from where we live right now.”

Cambron said that Sugarbear’s vet suggested getting him chipped when she first took him in as a stray.

She urged other pet owners to learn from his story and do the same.

“It works, you know?” she said.

Sugarbear is still settling back in with his old family and new sibling, a female cat the couple adopted in 2019, but has been adjusting well so far, according to Cambron.

“He’s just been exploring the house, and the cats have been checking him out, and so far, so good,” she said, adding that she only had one main concern about his return home.

“I just wonder if he remembers us.”