The importance of microchipping

I received a phone call yesterday about a Ginger cat found straying on Cathedral Road in Cardiff. A gentleman heard someone banging on his door. When he opened the door a young lady with a baby in a pushchair enquired "is this your ginger cat, he has been trying to cross the road". The gentleman said it was not. The lady went on to say that could he look after the cat as she could not. With some discussion the gentleman agreed to look after the cat that day but stated that he could not keep it. The following day he noticed a chrome bowl on his window sill with 2 tins of high quality dog food. Fearing that the cat had been abandoned he contacted Catwel who picked up the cat and took him up to Ty Mair (Catwel's rehoming centre). He was a beautiful neutered ginger tom. He had a wonderful temperament and was in lovely condition. Helen scanned the cheeky chap and discovered he was indeed microchipped. 1 phone call later and we discovered his name was George and he was registered to an address not to far from the road in which he had been straying and that he had been reported  missing back in March 2015. Helen phoned the number that George was registered too with Petlog and his owner (Gareth) answered and was truly delighted by the news that we had rescued his beloved cat. 20 minutes later he was up at Ty Mair and re-united with his lovely pussycat. He was extremely grateful and told us that George had been adopted from Maesteg Animal Welfare 3 months ago and that he did have a collar with his name and a contact number on it should he go missing. Sadly the collar was not present and it was thought that either George had broken it off or it had been removed by somebody. Who can tell? (Only George knows).  The moral of the story is please if you love your Cat or Dog for that matter get them microchipped. So many cats and dogs go missing or get stolen and collars can be lost or removed but a microchip is under the skin and is harder to remove. Microchipping does work and it re-unites pets with their owners. It is not that expensive but please use a trusted vet to carry out this procedure.

This is a picture of gorgeous George

A big thank you to the lovely couple who took the time to take in George on Cathedral Road and then phoned us at Catwel