Photo via Express and Star
A cat missing since last December was returned by chance to the vet’s where he’d panicked and run off, and has been reunited with his grateful family.
Copycat’s carrier broke when he was leaving the St. George’s Veterinary Group offices in Bushbury with his owner in December, 2012 following a routine checkup. The bottom fell out of the carrier and Copycat panicked and ran off.
Copycat’s owners are Alan and Edna Griffiths, an older couple from Wednesfield, UK, just outside Wolverhampton.
Alan searched through all manner of bad weather for his missing cat, and the couple repeatedly placed ads in the local paper, the Express and Star.
Alan put up 200 missing cat posters with Copycat’s photo and tried plotting out a tracking map by placing Xs in spots where there’d been reported sightings.
Despite his family’s best efforts, the trail went cold and Copycat was not recovered. That is, until last week, when a Good Samaritan brought him to the very place he’d last been seen by those who knew him – St George’s Veterinary Group offices in Bushbury.
Michael and Veronica Shepherd brought Copycat to the vet for a microchip scan after he’d turned up in their garden looking for food.
Vet nurse Louise Brown was on the reception desk when the Shepherds came in with the distinctively marked tuxie cat, and immediately recognized him from his missing posters, one of which was still hanging on the vet’s office walls. Louise called the Griffiths’ right away, and they rushed over to pick up their much-missed cat.
St George’s Veterinary Group wrote about the reunion at Facebook last week, on November 13, saying:
“Who would’ve believed it!!
“This morning at the Bushbury surgery we saw a couple with a stray cat that they had been feeding recently. Wondering if he had a microchip they brought him into us to scan him.
“Louise the nurse on the reception desk instantly recognised this cat! He had belonged to a client who came to the Bushbury surgery back in December last year, only on walking back to the car the cat carrier bottom collapsed and he escaped. Despite lots of media advertising and posters being displayed around the area he remained missing. Until today!! On recognising the cat (a poster was still displayed in our waiting room) we called the owners who immediately dashed up to the surgery to identify him.
“It was a very emotional reunion with not a dry eye in the building. It remains a mystery as to where ‘Copycat’ as he is named has been for the other 10 months but he remains in good health and left the surgery having now being microchipped.”
Edna Griffiths told the Express and Star, “I never gave up hope, I kept looking and thinking that he must be out there somewhere.”
“It was absolutely wonderful to see him again and incredible to see him looking so well,” Mrs Griffiths said.
“Clearly he had been well looked after and we can only thank whoever has been tending to him and be glad that he is alive and well.”
“Since losing Copycat we have met such lovely, helpful people, and now to find him after all this time is amazing, just amazing.”
