A tale of two microchips…

Maggie’s story

We were called out to rescue a beautiful cat that had sought refuge in a greenhouse. The gentleman had been feeding her for 5 weeks and made her a bed thinking she was lost. However, she showed no signs of wanting to leave so he called us for help.

Maggie was very nervous; she wouldn’t allow us to approach her and would watch warily from a distance. We decided to use a manual trap in hope that she would be hungry enough to enter it. After 15 hours, and with the help of the gentleman feeding, we got her! She was immediately brought into our care and after allowing her to settle for a few hours we scanned her for a microchip. Eureka!! She was chipped! We contacted her registered owners straight away, who initially thought it was a hoax call as Maggie had been missing for over 4 years! Maggie was safely reunited with her very grateful and emotional family shortly afterwards. I don’t think we’ll ever know where Maggie had been for the 4 years she was missing, but thanks to her microchip she’s now safely back home where she belongs.

CAT77 Nuneaton & Hinckley

Missing for eight years…

A message was received about a very vocal “tabby looking” cat that had been seen around some flats near one of our coastal areas. Apparently, the cat had been around for some time and no one knew who it belonged to. Armed with a trap in case the cat was a feral it was set in the communal garden, checking it every couple of hours throughout the day. Eventually the “tabby” cat showed himself and immediately I could see it was a Bengal but it took a few more hours for the cat to be caught and identified. This cat had been missing for over four years from the other side of the island and was reunited with his owner later that day – but this was not the end of the story.

Binx disappeared from his home at the age of six months and was missing for eight years.

While one of the tenants was showing us where the Bengal normally hung out, he pointed to a large black and white cat sleeping under some bushes. The young man said that someone in the flats had been feeding him but again, no one knew who he actually belonged to. The cat woke up and immediately showed interest in my bag on the grass which contained Dreamies. He was scanned and Jean was contacted so she could check for details of ownership. We were amazed to find out that this cat, who was called Binx, was nine years old but had been missing for eight and a half of those years from a part of the Island five miles away.

He had disappeared as a 6-month-old kitten (who thankfully had been neutered and chipped). His shocked owner was beside herself with happiness; she had never given up hope of finding him one day. When told where he had been found they concluded that, being an inquisitive youngster, he had possibly jumped into the back of the lorry belonging to their neighbour (who owned a field near the flats), and was whisked away to this area where he ended up living for eight and a half years. It was a shame that no one reported him as a stray at the time, as he would have still been quite noticeably small. Apparently about three years later someone who moved into the flats started feeding him regularly and continued to the day he was identified. Sadly, no attempt was ever made to find out who his owners were, which would have saved a lot of heartache for his owner and the man who fed him, as he had become very fond of the cat. Binx has settled back with his family remarkably well and it is like he has never been away.

Binx had been advertised as missing in the hope that he would be found one day. It was quite an emotional day to find not just one missing cat but two, and who had been missing for several years. When trapping feral cats, we have come across many missing domestic cats, the longest had been gone for ten years. We cannot emphasise enough how important it is to have cats microchipped whether domestic or feral.

CAT77 Jersey Branch