A Melbourne woman has praised police for going that extra mile to return her lost digital camera.

Meredith Lamb, of Fawkner, lost the camera in July after a day out on the Mornington Peninsula with relatives and her young baby.

She filed a lost property report at the Fawkner police station, but never really expected to get the camera back.

A week later police called and said someone had found the camera and turned it in to police.

She says police were able to track her down by enlarging a photo of a tag on Ms Lamb's cat in one of the photos.

"One of our cats was sitting with our baby. His tag was showing my mobile phone number," she told ABC local radio.

"They've enlarged the photo so that they could the mobile phone number clearly and then called me, off the tag of the cat in the photo.

"I was really quite touched, moved, that they would take that time and go to that effort."

Police were rewarded with some home-made rumballs.