Very friendly cat rescued from car in junkyard before she was crushed

Cat owners should check under their car's hood if it's about to be crushed! Well this is a story which illustrates the famous nine lives of the domestic cat. This cat probably used up all nine in one go. I wonder if it is a unique occurrence. It might have happened before.

Lilly is a vaccinated, microchipped and spayed, loving female domestic cat who almost lost her life in the most horrendous way: in a car crusher in Asheville, North Carolina.

Images believed to be in the public domain and believed taken by the rescue center.

Lilly's owner was searching for her when he allowed his car to be taken to a junkyard for crushing. Just before his car was crushed, a worker decided to remove the battery under the hood and Lilly hopped out into his arms.

For there she was taken to a local rescue center: Brother Wolf Animal Rescue and from there reunited with her caregiver. 

The owner was notified by the rescue center after the junkyard notified the rescue center that the car's owner was searching for his cat.

The story is told on the Storyful website.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Shed a tear watching reunion of lost cat and caregiver who were deeply connected

The power of the emotion in this video is the deep emotional bond the woman has for her cat companion and I'd say vice versa. It shattered her when her cat failed to return. As you might have guessed he is now supervised all the time and is leash trained. Viola. And the world is so pleased that you are back together with your darling cat.

10-year-old girl who fled Ukraine is reunited with her cat, Arsenii

10-year-old Ukrainian girl reunited with her cat who was flown over from her home country to California. Image: The Hill.

Here is an audio of this story. It is very short and succinct. It is a success story and a good ending story of cat rescue, effort and commitment to do the job. Ukraine must seem a long way away to this 10-year-old girl.

The audio file below is embedded. It is served by npr servers. It may stop working at some stage.

 

Here are a few words. The 10-year-old's family left everything behind but are now together in Sonoma County, California. They plan on starting a new life. The Bezhenar family are of course adjusting to their new way of life. 

There are 3 daughters, one of whom, Agnessa was pining for her cat. The other 2 daughters are Maria and Eleanor. The family are in a large house, and they have adopted an additional kitten named Tosha. 

The rescue of Arsenii, Agnessa's cat is down to Geoffrey Peters. He made the arrangements and found an app which connected the Bezhenar family to him. 

 The community pitched in and furnished an empty house and donated money, food, gas cards and gift cards. They even donated a piano as one of the daughters is musical.

Cat reunited after 10 years and from 260 miles away

Chubbs is an elderly, male, tabby cat missing all his teeth. His owner lives in Weymouth, Dorset, UK. That's where Chubbs lived and lives normally but he went missing about 10 years ago. He was seen by a kind person, Kelly, wondering along a main road with traffic in Greater Manchester. He was soaking wet and bedraggled. 

Kelly said that: "The day that I picked him up he was slowly walking across the main road in random directions, weaving between moving cars and narrowly being missed. He was so friendly and lovely but extremely skinny, covered in fleas, soaking wet-it had been raining heavily the night before-and generally looking like a stray.

Donna Gallagher and Chubbs. Image: The Times.

His owner, Donna Gallagher, had been distraught for a long time after he disappeared. They carried out the usual neighbourhood search and erected posters. She said: "I couldn't sleep and I couldn't stop crying". Her children were distraught.

Kelly took Chubbs to a veterinarian where they found that he was missing his teeth, covered in mats and struggling to walk. Fortunately, he had a microchip implant and the information that it contained was up to date. The chip revealed Donna's details and the veterinarian emailed her to say that he had been found.

Donna said: "When I saw Chubbs's name my heart skipped a beat". They don't know how Chubbs ended up 260 miles away but suspect that he was stolen by a tourist or tourists. He is now recovering and here is the clincher: he recognises his name when Donna calls it. I have always said that domestic cats have good long-term memories and this supports that assessment.

She said: "And he remembers his name-when I call him, his head comes straight up. He is happy now and I'm going to let him live out his older years. Until then he's going to be a very spoiled old man."

Family mistakenly donated their cat to a Denver thrift store

The owners of this ginger tabby accidentally donated him to a thrift store in Denver, Colorado, UK. The way it happened is interesting. The cat had hidden inside a recliner chair. No doubt he had made a little nest for himself there. He had probably done it before several times. 

As a side note, it should be added that recliner chairs are dangerous to kittens and puppies and even adult companion animals because they go underneath them and when a person sits on them and reclines,  the mechanism under the chair shifts position and it can crush the animal.

Montequlla inside the recliner inside the thrift store. Photo: the store or Denver Animal Protection.

But that is another issue. In this instance the cat, whose name is Montequlla, was hidden inside the recliner and the family donated the recliner to the thrift store. They did it because they were moving home

They realised that they were missing their cat and had no idea what had happened. In the meantime, the store noticed the cat (meows) and called Denver Animal Protection. They scanned the micro-chip but it had not been updated. Therefore they could not contact the owners.

Jenna Humphreys of Denver Animal Protection, told the Denver Channel: "Sure enough, there's a recliner out front, and there's a little orange tabby stuck inside. Very friendly, couldn't get out. They said that they had noticed the meowing shortly after somebody had dropped it off."

The recliner. Photo: Denver Animal Protection (believed).

In the meantime, the family were frantically searching nearby houses but then realised that he could be inside the store, inside the recliner. They returned to the store. The employees of that store gave them the phone number of Jenna Humphreys at which point they were able to reunite with their cat.

They put the event down to Montequlla being stressed and a bit frightened about the impending move to a new home. Perhaps there was quite a lot of noise and commotion in the home. His home territory was being disrupted quite dramatically. He decided to hide in a place which she had used before.

Humphreys said that "It's not uncommon for us to be call to help remove animals from those situations, but this was a new one."

Good ending 👍. Photo: the husband I expect.

The family are very happy that the story ended well. And they are thankful to everyone involved who managed to arrange the reunion. I bet Montequlla is happy too. Although he now has a move to do. He won't like that. It is going to cause some more problems.

RELATED: 5 tips to make moving home with your cat a success.

There is a Facebook post on the event by the Denver Animal Shelter which is below.

Montequlla's family donated a recliner to the thrift store when they were moving. They didn't realize that their cat was...

Posted by Denver Animal Shelter on Tuesday, January 4, 2022

Microchip your cat or face £500 fine cat owners are warned (UK)

Compulsory dog micro-chipping has been in place since 2016 in the UK. It's now the turn of cats. In England, from 2023, all cat owners will be required to have their feline companions microchip or face a fine of up to £500. It's finally coming about. There's been a discussion for a long time about compulsory micro-chipping in the UK. However, it is not as simple as simply enacting a law because with respect to dog micro-chipping the law is marginally workable as there are too many microchip databases.

You don't have to rely on a veterinary clinic to scan for a chip. You can do it. If you find a lost cat you can reunite that cat with their owner. You can purchase a scanner on Amazon for about £50. The scanner will tell you the chip number. You can then find out online which chip company has that number and contact the chip company.

There has been a delay in introducing mandated cat micro-chipping due to a review taking place into the regulations on micro-chipping of dogs. Veterinarians have raised concerns that the system which requires registering the microchip on about 15 separate databases can cause problems when trying to reunite dogs with their owners.

Microchip. Pic in public domain.

Defra plans to improve the database system before introducing mandated micro-chipping to cats.

There are over 10.8 million cat companions in the UK. I'm told by The Times newspaper that as many as 2.8 million are un-chipped. And 80% of stray cats brought to Cats Protection are not microchip.

Under the new law, can owners will have to ensure that their pet is microchipped before they reach the age of 20 weeks. Further, the contact details will need to be kept up-to-date on the database. Failure to comply with the law could result in a £500 fine if they do not rectify the problem within 21 days.

Lord Goldsmith, an animal lover and a friend of Carrie Johnson, who I suspect is pushing for these changes to animal welfare laws, said:

"Cats are much-loved parts of our families and making sure they're microchipped is the best way of making sure that you are reunited with them if they are ever lost or stolen."

The new rules will help protect millions of cats across the country. They are part of the government's Action Plan for Animal Welfare according to Lord Goldsmith.

Jacqui Cuff, the head of advocacy at Cats Protection said:

"Every day, we see how important micro-chipping is for cats and for people who love them - whether it's reuniting a loss cat with their owner, identifying an injured cat, or helping to ensure an owner can be informed in the said event that their cat has been hit and killed by a car."

The BVA (British Veterinary Association) are very much behind the new law but they are adamant that the database issue is dealt with in order to make the law effective.

P.S. In 2016, the Daily Record reported that at that time there were up to 6 firms operating separate databases in the UK which, it is claimed, made it almost impossible to operate. Some veterinarians said that the compulsory micro-chipping of dogs was unworkable as a result. There are other databases in Europe, the US and Canada. These databases are meant to be part of a network so they are cross-referenced but apparently this is not always the case. On occasions it seems that you can key in the microchip number for a dog that you know is micro-chipped and registered but the database comes up with a "no registration found" warning. This is the problem referred to by Lord Goldsmith.

Comment: one problem I foresee is enforcing the law. How does an official know whether a cat is micro-chipped or not? I suspect that the only time it will become apparent is when a lost cat is found and scanned by a veterinarian. If that cat is not microchipped and the owner can be found then they will be in line for a fine, potentially.