WATCH: One Woman's Emotional Reunion with Her Lost Cat — 'I Knew He Wasn't Dead'

Iris Estrada Samaniego prays the video "gives others hope," she tells PEOPLE

Christmas came a little early for Iris Estrada Samaniego.

The mom of two from Murrieta, California, was reunited with her cat of 12 years after Diego turned up at an animal shelter.

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“Something told her to check the shelter today and when she looked she saw a cat [that] looked just like her Diego,” reads a post by Estrada Samaniego’s sister Crystal Samaniego, who shared an emotional video of their reunion on Facebook. “She came straight to the shelter after work and when we saw him we knew it was him.”

The post says that the cat went missing without a trace in June of 2015 and was believed to have been eaten by a coyote.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been looking for him,” Estrada Samaniego says in the video, through her tears. “I’ve been looking for him for almost two years … my kids are gonna flip out … I knew he wasn’t dead.”

The kids were, in fact, in disbelief when Diego came home, as you can see in a video their mother shared.

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“I pray it gives others hope,” Estrada Samaniego tells PEOPLE of the video, which has been viewed over 3 million times. “It’s just like before. He’s following us around the house loving on the kids.”