LAST MONTH A Maltese dog named Caesar who disappeared more than a year ago after a car crash that killed two members of the family who owned it made his way home.

The Quay County Sun reported that Caesar was found by a volunteer looking for adoptable dogs at a shelter in Tucumcari. She was able to track down his owner, Monica Benson, after Caesar was scanned for a microchip.

Benson, who lost her husband and a daughter in the accident, said her four surviving children are very excited and have made “welcome home” posters for Caesar.

Homeward bound

So what other animals have made it home to their owners against the odds?

1. In May of this year Mason, a terrier mix, made it back to his home with two broken legs after he had been literally picked up and blown away during a Tornado in Alabama. When his owners returned to their home three weeks later they found Mason sitting on the front porch:

2. Hudson the cat was reunited with his owner after he was found inside a cinema several miles from his home in Joppa in Scotland. Hudson had been missing for seven weeks, having gone wandering in search of a girlfriend, reports The Scotsman. His owner had reported him missing and she was contacted by Scottish SPCA to say that he had been found in an Odeon cinema.

3. Cattle dog Sophie Tucker survived for more than four months on a desert island by eating goats after she fell overboard while travelling in a yacht with her owners. Sophie survived on an island off the coast of Queensland, Australia after swimming six miles through shark-infested waters. She was found when the bodies of several goats were discovered by a ranger, who then managed to catch the dog. She was reunited with her owners when they came to the island to see if it could possibly be her.

4. In June a dog in Canada was reunited with its owners after being found 4,500 miles from home. Pollux disappeared from her owner’s back garden, and it’s thought she may have jumped aboard a freight train like the Littlest Hobo, or she may have been picked up by a trucker or a family. She was found 4,500 west of her home and was identified via the microchip in her neck.

5. An almost blind cat that was abducted from the SPCA in San Francisco somehow ended up on the streets of New York. Jack Daniels the cat was living at the centre in San Francisco in May 2009 with his brother Jim Beam when he vanished from his enclosure.  Jack was caught by animal welfare officers in New York in August and his microchip revealed what a long journey he had made. He was escorted back to California by air accompanied by a kind volunteer.

6. In 2006 a tortoise named Horace was found wandering down a lane two miles from his home… eight months after he’d gone missing! The BBC calculated at the time that Horace must have been moving at a speed of around 39 feet a day. His owner, who’d had him microchipped, said that the tortoise had vanished from her garden and she thought he would never survive the winter.

7. Finally, technically not a pet being reunited with its owner, but probably one of the best animal/human reunions you’re ever going to see… Christian the lion: