The phone rang Sunday morning. Animal Control was calling to tell me a stray cat was brought in and his microchip came back to me. The owner phone number was disconnected and the other phone no one ever answered and kept getting the message that a mailbox wasn’t set up. “Great” I thought, “someone I adopted to who had promised not to let their cat outside to wander”. With the bad phone numbers, that was not a good sign. I was thinking the owners probably moved and did what so many people do…dump him and go.

With the microchip information in hand I went through all my adoption contracts to find out who the owner was and why he had been roaming outside. Not finding one, I began to question my organization and filing ability. Another call to Animal Control and I was provided with the cats name – Otis (hum, not familiar), long haired tuxedo (know how many black and white cats I get a year-not helping), owners name (still not familiar). Okay…now I know I’m going senile.

When I get to Animal Control and staff bring him up…still not familiar. Staff tell me I pulled him out in 2007 and the adoption form is in my name, so I chalk it up to being senile and take him home to settle in with his roomies while I try to figure it out. Having pictures of all the cats that have gone through KKC on my computer, I start going through the files. Ah-hah, a picture of a cat named Otis. Open it up, yep that’s him, but still don’t remember him and the background in the picture isn’t my house, so I decide to shoot an e-mail to Sue, with the picture, to see if perhaps she knows the cat. Ding, ding, ding, yes, we have a winner. Sue tells me that it was a cat I pulled out for her back then. So I’m not going crazy afterall, it wasn’t one of my rescues. She tells me the owner called her a few months back when Otis disappeared one day but she doesn’t have a current number.

I call Carol, who is out and about doing her multitude of errands and not only does she know who this person is, but where she lives, so while I am chatting with her on the phone she drives over to the women’s house, hands her the phone and says “Cindy wants to talk to you”. Jeri was so excited when I told her I had Otis. Seems Otis had been missing in action since APRIL. She had looked everywhere for him, gone door to door and checked at Animal Control for several months. She was devastated at the loss of her baby and thought she’d never see him again. With the exception of an abscess at the base of his tail, he was in pretty good shape. As soon as I got home from work, Jeri was there to pick him up. She could hardly wait to get him back home to reunite him with the rest of the family.

Even though the phone number was wrong, because he was microchipped he found his way back home. Otis had been missing for 5 months; I once had a cat who showed back up after being gone for a year.

Morale of this story, don’t give up hope and never stop looking. If your cat (dog) is not microchipped, get it done. It’s a sure ticket home when they are found. Of course the ideal situation is always to keep you cat(s) indoors or build a cat enclosure so they can be outdoors in a safe environment, but even when you take precautions, cats get out