When Chloe the cat saw Rebecca Lee for the first time in six years, she rolled over and began to purr as if the two had just parted company yesterday. The reunion was anything but ordinary, however, according to a story in The Guardian. Lee was overjoyed to find out the cat she had given up for dead was alive and well and had been living as a stray just over a mile away from Lee’s home.
Lee said she was devastated when her beloved cat went missing in 2010 after she jumped from a pet carrier during a routine trip to the vet, and vanished. “I put up posters and placed adverts and shortly after got a call to say a cat matching her description had been found dead by the roadside.” She assumed the worst and abandoned her search. So she was stunned but delighted to get a call recently from an animal rescue group telling her she should come and fetch her cat. “It was a real shock, but lovely news to hear that Chloe had been found and was alive and well after so many years,” she said.
During her long absence, Chloe had been living as a stray who was fed by an elderly woman who lived a mile away from Lee, according to an article in Metro.com. The elderly woman became too frail to care for the cat, and the woman’s family brought Chloe to the nearby Cats Protection Adoption Center, where a routine scan of her microchip enabled the staff to contact Lee.
“‘Chloe was nervous with us but she was very happy to see Rebecca and started rolling over and purring when she saw her,” said Molly Hughes, deputy manager at the Adoption Center told The Guardian newspaper. “It’s great to have been able to reunite Chloe with her family, and it was touching to see them together.” Hughes said that microchipping is important, as well as keeping database information up to date. “We often have microchipped cats come into our care and are sadly unable to reunite them with their owners because the contact details on the database are incorrect.”
