Three years ago, fluffy orange tabby cat Timmy lived with his family in Portland, OR, where they had adopted him as a kitten from a local shelter. Timmy was allowed out for short periods but always came back home. He was outside one day when a man visiting Portland from Missoula, MT picked hims up and took him back home, thinking a friend would take him. The friend did not take the cat, who had been renamed Channel 6 for the TV station in the area where he’d been found, so the man who’d picked him up kept him.
Three years on, the man decided he could not keep the cat anymore and took the cat to the Humane Society of Western Montana, in Missoula to turn him in. The shelter did a microchip scan and quickly located the family Timmy had not seen in 3 years. The family were stunned and thrilled to learn that Timmy was alive and was able to return home. They searched for months but finally ended up thinking he had been hit by a car. Yes, the told the shelter’s adoption specialist, Drea Krutulis, when she contacted them, they very much wanted to have Timmy back home with them.
The shelter reached out to the public asking for someone to provide transport and Timmy found a ride to Portland with Caitlin Hofmeister. Timmy and Caitlin set out on their trip Friday evening. Several others offered rides at a later date or made suggestions for transport groups, had Caitlin not been able to make the trip. Missoula was determined to send Timmy back home!
In answer to why the visitor would pick up a cat and take him away from his home city, and possibly from his family, a woman named Britt F. wrote at The Humane Society of Western Montana’s Facebook page to explain. Britt wrote, ” I know the person who found Timmy in Oregon…he was found outside a friend’s new house. They assumed he was abandoned from the previous owners of the house because he kept trying to get inside. He was taken back to Missoula to begin his new life as “Channel 6.”He WAS checked for a microchip at a local vet but they found none. He was surrendered to the Humane Society because of mounting expenses due to health issues. Glad he’s found his way back home!”
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great story
It is amazing how many beautiful dogs and cats end up in shelters and aren’t claimed. Many times it is because someone “found” them and kept them a while and then turned them in to a shelter and meanwhile their original ownes have given up their pets for dead or stolen and in a new home. The best thing that has happend to lost pets is the microchip and any animal either found or turned in as owned should be checked and if a chip is found, the registered owner should be called. We put 3-4 million animals a year to death and if any lives are saved, it is worth the extra bit of effort.