It’s not unusual for some cat owners to feel anxiety about how much their feline friend actually cares about them – after all, in popular culture cats can have a reputation for being quite distant.
For Ono-san, a Japanese man living in Saitama, that anxiety was doubly acute given he’d been away from his cat Ku-chan for two years after needing medical treatment.
Ono-san had looked after Ku-chan since he was a kitten, but had to leave him when Ku-chan was eight. Cat food company Kal Kan wanted to see if the cat would still recognise its old owner’s voice, so set about doing an experiment.
Unless you understand Japanese, you’ll need to turn on the captions (the CC button on the video).
It’s not rare to find videos of dogs struggling to contain themselves when being reunited with their owners, but videos of cats in the same circumstance don’t seem to be as popular.
Ku-chan had no problem recognising his owner’s voice even after all those years apart, which made Ono-san very happy.
“I’m glad. I’m so glad. I don’t know what to say,” Ono-san said, according to YouTube’s translate function. “I miss you Ku-chan”.
There was a bitter sweet ending as Ku-chan and Ono-san were reunited – although it’s unclear whether the pair remained together or Ku-chan went back to his new home in Sendai, over 200 miles from his old owner.
Let’s hope Kal Kan managed to keep them together for at least a little while.
