Cat and Owner Reunited

On Monday, Barb Oswald's son heard a cat meowing outside their front door. The family lives in Prairie Ridge subdivision in Minooka. Although the cat, whose name they later found out was Dude, was not wearing a tag, when the family would leave the house, Dude would follow them wherever they would go.

Oswald contacted Patch on Wednesday, hoping to get the word out about the found cat and hoping to find its owner. By Thursday, she had a photo of the furry, orange cat and the .

Oswald contacted a couple people who were disappointed to find out that the found cat was not the one they had been looking for. But Heidi Wever knew the minute she saw the photo of the cat that she had found Dude.

"That is my cat," Wever said excitedly into my voice mail on Friday morning. "We lived over in and we moved and we moved down to and we haven't seen him in gosh, a couple weeks.

"We are assuming he must have walked back to the old house and that was why he ended up back across the street in Prairie Ridge."

Oswald had been giving Dude water and cat food, but said the cat had not been eating much. The owners said that a little weight loss seemed like the only thing the cat suffered while outside. Dude is 12 years old.

Wever commented that she wished the cat could talk so it could tell the story of what he had been doing outside for weeks.