But apparently Jack took an instant dislike to his new "temporary servant" and left. That was, until Wednesday this week when Mrs Dodds opened her front door in Mosgiel and found the 8-year-old cat sitting on the mat.
She was both surprised and ecstatic about Jack’s return.
"He just came in and was back to his usual self, rubbing up against us.
"He’s got fat — he is huge. So someone’s been looking after him."
She knew it was Jack because she had taught him to take cat biscuits from between her lips.
"No cat does that, so that’s how we knew it was him. He’s exactly the same character."
Mrs Dodds has had Jack since he was a kitten and was horrified when she returned from her month-long holiday two years ago and found her furry friend was missing.
She did all the usual things to try to find him — calling the SPCA, checking at the local vet clinics, putting missing cat posters up around the area with his photo, putting messages on social media — but to no avail.
She said Jack had sometimes wandered off for a few days at a time, but always came back. So initially she thought he would soon be back. But as the months passed without a sign of him, her hopes faded.
"Because he’s a beautiful blue-grey cat, he could have easily been picked up, or he could have been run over."
Since his return, Mrs Dodds has taken him to a vet where he was given a clean bill of health, as well as a new bright pink collar.
Unfortunately, when the Otago Daily Times visited yesterday, Jack was nowhere to be seen, and Mrs Dodds suspected he was now going between her house and the house he had been living at for the past two years.
So if he is "double-dipping" from the cat bowl at someone else’s house, she hoped the pink collar would alert the occupants to his identity.
